Another Nameless World
by XelYel
Summary: What would humanity do against pokémon if they existed, if they were as powerful as they are depicted, and were hostile? Could humans even stand any chance at survival? A young man faces the perilous, unforgiving wilderness and finds a way to win against all odds. From his discovery a duo will be born to open everyone's hearts to a new era.
1. Chapter 1

_Credits to EagleTsubasa for her work as beta-reader. She was a big help to hone my grammar skills and consistency all throughout._

 _Credits to AngelTheSeventh for his work as beta-reader._

 **NOTE: Story updates will now be on my profile, so you can check there if you are interested.**

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

I was pacing back and forth inside my bedroom. I could not stand still; every ounce of my body was tense, and I needed every one of my thoughts to focus solely on relaxing and discharging my muscles if I wanted to keep the tears from flowing. My legs were doing double time, though again and again, they were cut short by the walls—the room was tiny and I was forced to turn around every three steps or so. This only served to increase my sense of claustrophobia, as did the unnerving creaks caused by my heavy steps on the floor's wooden planks. Likely, I was on the verge of a panic attack.

I had received a letter from the Federation that day. It read the following:

 _The_ **U** _nited_ **F** _ederation of the_ **P** _ure_ **H** _uman_ **R** _ace salutes you, comrade!_

 _Rejoice, soldier! For the glory of your soul and the greater good, you are hereby assigned the following mission._

 ** _MISSION:_** _Capture_

 ** _WHEN:_** _First week of November 2109_

 ** _COMMANDER:_** _Sgt. Clutcher_

 _ **PLATOON SIZE:** 50 __(fifty)_

 _ **SPECIFICATIONS:** The target is a fully grown, Psychic-type monster. You are granted a __Poké Ball_ _—attached to this letter—to execute the mission._

 _Keep in mind that THIS IS CLASSIFIED MILITARY INFORMATION, and as such, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DISTRIBUTE THIS CONTENT IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM, NEITHER PARTIALLY, NOR IN ITS ENTIRETY._

 _May the blessing of our Heavenly Savior enlighten you._

 _The mind is weak, but the flesh is strong:_

 _Work, Wage War, Win!_

And in a very small font, at the bottom of the page:

* _Please take note that any type of digitalized, written, printed, composed, recorded, formulated,_ _painted, chiseled, or scribbled piece of information has been rightfully censored, and may also be subject to limitations of visibility according to the rank of the recipient._

That was all. The full declaration of my death sentence was many times shorter than the tragic poems of the _Victorious Scriptures_ , the holy book of the Federation. I could not avert my eyes from a few key words, aghast by how concise and cold they were to spell my demise: Monster. Fully grown. Psychic-type. Capture.

"Never get into a Capture Mission!" echoed inside my guilty head. I repeated the predicament several times, both in my head and aloud. Many times I had heard those words, spoken by my father or hushed by acquaintances or passersby I had never met before, and from whom I had not heard another word. It was no law—nothing was but the words of the Heavenly Savior—but it was still an implicit rule of society, which I knew I had broken.

At large, missions were the blood of the nation under the Federation. The term was a broad synonym for "job", ranging from daily and recurring activities like excavation in the mines, field work, or soldier duty, to specific, time-strict missions like scavenging or hunting in a specified area. In exchange for the service, the Federation would give you food, a bed, and kept you alive. Since missions dictated one's daily schedules and work times, and since missions were not all equal—scientific research and bureaucratic missions gave plenty of liberty and spare time, in comparison to the others—they effectively divided society into casts of privileged and commoners. Thus, a mission letter like the one I was holding in my hand was always a life-changer, for better or for worse.

Mine was just the worst possible one, among all.

No one wished a Capture Mission on their worst enemy. Even when I did clear my mind from the horrors that awaited me and reasoned around the situation in the most cool-headed fashion I could manage, my future looked grim: brought and left in the wild, unable to get back to any city of the Federation until the targeted creature was caught, my choices would have been either to be attacked and slain by a random monster in the wild, or to be killed in a desperate attempt against the monster I was supposed to catch. All recounts of Capture Missions told this same story: in short, I was going to die in a week.

My head spun in a vortex of terrifying images: myths of giant beasts smashing dozens with a single fist, trees trapping people with their roots and slowly sucking their life out, poisons inhaled through a single gasp of air or injected with a single touch, or creatures which would torture their victims for weeks before finishing them; stories of fairies that tricked and preyed on unfortunate humans, specters who caused never-ending nightmares and fueled on them; entities of pure fire, ice and electricity with enormous force, or monsters capable of generating eruptions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, earthquakes, and all of nature's disasters, and who tormented humanity through the darkest powers of the Evil God!

It was not like one could shrug off or refuse an official mission from the Federation, either. The Federation was the last, united government of humanity, and its villages were the only place safe enough to survive. Outside of them, there was nothing but a wilderness of overpowered, hellish, deformed monsters who had put a quick end to and replaced all animals on Earth, and reduced the advanced and blooming human population of billions to a few hundred thousand individuals who bore a constant fear inside their hearts and lived in bare-bone strongholds and hamlets that could barely communicate with each other.

My only consolation was that I was not alone for the mission, because the letter stated that I was to go with a group of forty-nine other people. It was a meager comfort, though, since none of us would have been given any equipment against the beast except a single Poké Ball. How were we supposed to capture a Psychic-type—one of the strongest types of monsters—whether we were fifty or fifty thousand? Without firearms, without armor, not a knife, or a damned crust of bread for nourishment, nothing!

" _To assure the target creature is not injured nor killed,"_ was the official explanation offered by the Federation. Nowhere did they elaborate on the actual reason for the lack of equipment: they wanted us dead. What better way than to let traitors of the Federation be slaughtered the enemies of the Federation, the monsters themselves? After all, an execution takes time and effort, and it's not very cheap, is it? Of course, a Capture Mission did not _technically_ make you a criminal, and sending people into the wild was considered _a necessary sacrifice._

At least there was the Poké Ball. It was true that it was a rare item, and that possessing one was considered a privilege and a symbol of wealth when it was _gifted_ by the Federation as reward for heroic efforts—you had the chance to capture and control one of the monsters! Any one of them!

However, possessing a Poké Ball meant a Capture Mission which, unless you were wealthy enough to have access to proper equipment, was not the chance of your lifetime; rather, it was the last chance _for_ your life. That was why the Federation also gave Poké Balls to all people they thought were dangerous, or straight-up criminals: to send them to their deaths, while keeping the faint hope that one of them may eventually catch the creature assigned and return alive, thus being of some use to the Federation's objectives. One captured monster was worth hundreds of human lives.

Of course, one Pokè Ball was sitting on my desk, as well. As if a light switch had been turned on inside my brain, I nervously scrambled to the ball, which I had completely ignored up to that point, and I took a good look at it under the pale gray light that came through the thin window of my room. The object was made up of two shells, connected by a black strip that extended around the diameter, though it left space for a white, circular button in the middle of its track.

All in all, it looked like a toy: it was lightweight and made of plastic—a cheap and widely-used material for everyday necessities, not because it was easy to craft, but because there was plenty lying around pretty much everywhere near the cities, unused and abandoned. A part of me thought that its design was a joke made by the Federation: such a blatant contrast between the joy the item pretended to convey with its radiant colors and its curves against their poor holders, their patched-up clothing and their handmade, rough commodities!

However, something about that shiny sphere was truly terrifying: my skin jittered at its abnormal smoothness and lack of asperities, and my eyes were needled by its flamboyant colors. Time and time again, I ran my fingers around its smooth surface in silence, slowly, with my mouth slightly open and my mind dazed.

 _A Poké Ball. A Poké Ball,_ I chanted inside my head, as if my amazement and incredulity could make the item disappear from reality. Being so close to it left me feeling alienated, as if it was too unreal, too perfect of an object to belong to me, one which only the highest of hierarchies could approach, and at the same time, as if it contained a tremendous power that was bound to change my life. Maybe it did look like a toy, but the piece of technology trembled, both in my grasp, and in my thoughts.

A few seconds later, I ran for the door and darted out of my home into the cold afternoon of an October Tuesday. I needed fresh air, and a good walk outside.

/

I only have a vague memory of most things that happened around me in the days before my departure from my home town—the bitter goodbyes, the disdain of my superiors, the insurmountable pile of bureaucratic documents to sift through—but I remember vividly that the weather did not change a bit on any of these days. The gusts were always brisk, the clouds were the same thick layer of gray mucus, the air was hollow, all the same as the day I had received the letter. It matched my mental state quite well: clouded, numb, and exhausted because of all the constant fruitless conjectures of my mind as I tried to find an escape from my conviction.

A single event woke me up from my torpor, during that week.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was wandering about the dull buildings of my hometown. I spent most of the days of the week doing little else since I had quit my previous mission and, as such, I had nothing else to do for the time being. It was easy to lose oneself in that monochrome scenery of abandoned streets and walls old as the World itself; the occasional passersby all wore the same expression and held the same downwards posture—I bet I was no different—and even light was on a gray-scale. It took a bunch of teenagers running and bumping into me to make me aware of my surroundings again.

"Over there!"

"Come on, hurry up!"

"Move it, guys, we really need to see this!"

They turned left at a crossing a few meters away. It was only a secondary road, yet several people seemed to be headed in that general direction; others were looking at each other, some confused, some troubled, mumbling or checking the time, only to start walking in the same manner.

It was time for the public execution. On a Sunday morning, the sheep would gather together to partake in the holy function, the church's bells merrily clanging to invite everybody to enter the parish. Similarly, the loud, crackling speakers on top of poles all around the city were announcing that it was time, and that, indeed, citizens were required to be bestowed a bloody blessing.

I had always despised the practice—of course I did—but, in order to assure my survival, I would have never dared to defy any duty imposed by the Federation. Why, then, did I began walking just like everyone else if it did not matter whether I was partaking in the event or not, since my death had already been planned?

I didn't know, but I still did. Soon enough, the narrow road was replaced by a very crowded square, and as more people arrived and blocked the entrances to the square, I lost the option to turn back.

In the center of the square there was a wide wooden altar, on top of which a black metal frame with an angled, sharp blade, anxiously waiting to fall. It was much wider and taller than what would be used for a human body, which made it all the more unsettling.

People everywhere were moving and talking: a single convicted. A big one. A drake. Five meters high. No, eight. Ten, maybe. Can't be more. No, definitely not human-like—this brought a general sigh of relief, several expressions reassured, yet there were a few disappointed, or even upset ones. I felt comforted: at the very least, this time it was going to be easier than it usually was.

Or so I thought…

A dozen soldiers lined up in the middle of the wooden platform; immediately after, they raised their weapons and stood still. Then, a lump of medals of honor shaped in the form of a man marched up there, at which they saluted. Stocky, short, but with a well-defined muscular tone, Commander Clutcher was more sparkling gold from medals than military green from his uniform, and less of visible skin than that. He would have almost been a comical figure, if only he wasn't greeted with such a disarming silence by the audience. Behind him, a gigantic metal box, as tall as the frame and barely wide enough for it, was being dragged to the altar by a few soldiers. Growls could be heard from it, but no one paid enough care, mesmerized by the voice of the commander.

"People of humanity, I know we have to face a perilous life, day after day," he began shouting, completely ignoring the microphone next to him, "but fear not! We are the superior species of the entire universe, and so… We! Shall! Not! Fall!" For each of those last words he pounded his chest.

"We shall reclaim what belongs to us: this planet is ours to use, and so are its pitiful creatures! A lush world awaits its conquerors! We will make a slave of every single one of its beings!" He stretched his arms wide and looked at the crowd, left to right.

Then he toned down his voice, following the customary of rhetoric talk. "God will avenge our children, and our men's deaths."

And then up again, like a roller coaster. "They say God betrayed us, but I tell you, He did not! Such a statement is heresy! God's doing is right, and we are on His side! Pray, and have Faith: God will give us everything we want, _if_ we are obedient."

"But, we also need to do our work: God does not punish the filth of this world by himself. Instead, God sends us, the Federation, to execute His word of justice. Now, we will see His justice!" "Justice" was spit out, more than spoken.

A flawless execution of a speech I had already heard dozens upon dozens of times. A few among the crowd had been whispering the words as they were spoken by the Commander, much like a credo.

The soldiers put their weapons back with a swift two-step movement and tapped their feet in perfect synchrony. One after another, starting with the furthest from the commander, they walked down the altar and reached the box while readying their tasers.

Finally, the container was opened. I was amazed: inside was a far more magnificent creature than any other I had ever seen, and its sight was a cold shower which dissipated the sloth inside my head and made me reason with clarity and wonder.

It was crimson, with spots of orange on its head and tail and a lighter tone for its belly. It was as tall as a house, as large as a ship, and had the shape of a fierce drake who could stand on its two beefy legs. Its long shiny claws compensated for the short length of its arms, while the horn on its head could easily drill into one's body, and so could its pronounced teeth, which seemed to be made of steel. Its tail was literally burning, and so did its mouth as its roar made the ground itself tremble. It would fiercely gaze with those dark blue eyes, bigger than one's hand! Far from being a show of pure raw force, its wingspan must have covered half of the entire square, and would allow it to fly high and fast. What a fearsome creature...!

...Electrocuted, a single thunderous zap, and brought head-down to the ground. The chains on its legs, arms and wings weren't allowing it any form of rebellion, and it looked severely exhausted already: scars and cuts were easily seen everywhere on its body, and its eyes seemed to not be able to focus—who knows what they had done to it beforehand.

A pained growl was all it could muster as they chained its neck and dragged it to the frame. Its gigantic body moved slowly and mechanically, almost thoughtlessly.

It was just the latest of the many enemies the Federation had brought to the altar and of which I had seen the execution, yet something clasped and crunched my heart at its sight, much more than usual. Perhaps it was a different sensibility, given my peculiar situation, but something pained me, maybe in its lost eyes like that of a dog, or maybe in its shaky movements, anomalous of such a majestic body. Maybe something about its heavy breathing, something about its beaten stance, or its lowered head... Truly, without the force to resist, the powerful being was no more than a scared, lonely puppy.

I could not stand the sight, yet I had no way to stop the execution, and I was too much of a coward anyway to attempt to do so. The dragon was eventually put under the shining blade, held by a single rope, and a single, fatal knot.

The crowd was silent, waiting more than ever.

Commander Clutcher gave one final look at the scene before nodding at himself in self-content. As he raised his hand, the bond was loosened by one of the soldiers...

...And the blade fell.

To this day, the thought of the following moments brings back images at full force. I see myself back at the scene of the execution—me, my terrified little eyes and my young mind. I see the blade falling, falling, falling-falling-falling hundreds of times, gaining more and more momentum as it dives towards the dragon's neck with tremendous force...

…but unfortunately, the hit did _not_ kill the beast.

"GYAAAAAARGHH!" it screamed in a deafening roar, its mouth wide open: the blade had gone only halfway through. The nerves and vessels of the dragon were gushing out along with a stream of blood and pieces of the tongue where it had bitten itself. Everything was pouring out everywhere, a flood of liquid down on the crowd—the blessing had been given—and that mess of flesh, it could have been the work of the most brutal and insane butcher. The beast was bawling and bellowing, insane.

The chaos, the horror, the shrieks, the tears, the vomit on the ground, the cheers, everything! I tried to look for a focal point—someone who would act and stop the madness—but no one did. They left the fierce beast like that, even those few troubled by regret. Me included, of course.

Still, it continued, but, slowly, less and less. Panting, wheezing. Breathing, barely. Noiselessly, and finally, soulless.

A dragon closed its eyes that day; it was the end of its misery.

May it rest in peace.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

After a sleepless night, the first Monday of November had finally come. In the mirror of my bedroom, I looked at the bags under my eyes and at my bushy hair, whose direction was supposed to be swept back, but which was actually just all over the place. I saw the two grooves in my pale skin which ran down from my tear ducts, deviating on the outside over the cheeks and flowing right into my black beard which was akin to the plantain of a long-neglected lawn. My nose sniffled and my eyes blinked several times as if to cry, but I had already shed too many tears. A body in relative shape was supporting that messy face which seemed like it could fall at any moment; it didn't seem too happy to do so as it, itself, was deflated, and its shoulders were pointing downwards. The worn-out, rough clothing only served to complement the picture as a whole.

I wondered whether I should have tidied myself, if it would have made any difference. I could not hold the thought for long, though, because the customary fears of the mission came back to haunt me. Since the day I had received the letter, when they had become the landlords of my mind, they enjoyed every room, every piece of furniture, every little angle of the mansion. It was hard to distract them, even for a single instant, and I had become so familiar with them they had become nauseating, as they repeated themselves like broken discs a thousand times, always with the same images, the same threats, the same impossible problems I could but attempt at solving _—_ it's a terrible trait of mine, this tunnel vision I have on things.

With these thoughts, I stood in front of the mirror, dazed for what seemed like the longest time: from the moment I woke up, I didn't move until it was seven sharp, when someone knocked on my door, banging on it with little patience. A couple of soldiers had come to take me away.

I dragged myself to the dining room where the front door was. I gave one last glance at the place: the cooking area was a small rectangle, with very few utensils and no more than four or five plates, all messily shoved inside the sink, none of which were clean. The fridge was busted, and no electrical appliance was filling the hole above the wooden shelf where the television used to sit. Small patches of moss were growing in the walls here and there, but were still hidden well enough not to be noticeable by anyone who was not acquainted with the place, not much differently than an infectious illness which has spread to a few thousand people in a population of millions. The ceiling was pouring droplets of water in the left corner, and the cracked floor had seen better times.

All that said, it still felt like home, and with the smallest effort I could see the only detail missing: my father, sitting on one of the two empty chairs around the table as he drank a shot of liquor. I could picture his ragged and filthy clothes, with several cuts and a giant patch of a clashing color on the left side of his sweater; his melancholy look, the frown on his mouth highlighted by the creases all over his face; the big, rough hands of an underpaid worker. I could even smell the strong odor of his sweat, so much his as to become the scent a dog would always recognize him with.

At the time he was out working in the mines. It was a terrifying job which required exhausting work at freezing temperatures during night hours, as to avoid the monsters that lurked around the mines and the plains at daytime or, at the very least, the majority of them. He would often tell me of how careful he had to be about which patch of grass he could step on, which trees he could touch, and which rocks he could pickaxe and how quickly or slowly he had to do so, because any of them might have been a monster in disguise, and any sound might have alerted the sleeping ones. Miners were always escorted by soldiers, and every now and then, someone would not return home. Despite how terrible it was, he carried out his mission every day, for me. We didn't always go along, but I was going to miss him.

On the table, there was my backpack, which he must have put there along with a note.

 _My dear son,_

 _I cannot imagine your distress in these hard moments—the look in your eyes tells me more than a thousand words._

 _I know we are not on the best of terms. We've had long, drawn-out disputes, and it pains me that even right now the only memory I can bring up of you is of us shouting at each other._

 _Maybe you are right. Maybe I am a coward, like you often tell me. I've always tried to discourage you from your terrific curiosity to keep you safe, no matter how much you suffered because of it: I've prohibited you from reading forbidden books, from talking to incriminated people, from trying to sneak past Federation soldiers into the wild outside. I forced you to abide by all the rules of the Federation, no matter how unfair they were._

 _When you began to change, about two years ago, when you began to display that rebellious and stubborn side of yours, I was so afraid to lose you, the only family member I still have, that I tried in every way to hinder your personal growth. I have been so strict and unreasonable with you. You must have felt lonely in this damned world we live in, and where I should have eased the pain I only made it worse. You are right, I am a disappointment of a father; I'm only realizing it now that I'm going to lose you._

 _If they assigned you to this mission, you must have broken the rules anyway, even after all I've told you. It fills me with pride that you did. Your mother would be proud, as well._

 _I won't be a false optimist—we both know most people don't make it past a Capture Mission—nevertheless, I will pray for your safety._

 _I can't do much for you. I can only give you the few things I have: enough clothes so you can make a blanket to sleep more comfortably at night, my old knife, a bit of food, and a photo of our family. It's all in the bag. I know it's not much, but I hope this will be of some aid through your mission. Be careful out there, and be always on your toes. Remember to wash your hands, and to keep your socks dry; to always bandage a wound, and to avoid the plains during the day and the forests during the night._

 _I love you. I'm sorry I could never do more for you._

 _And finally, Be Strong and Good luck—I'll always think of you._

I spilled generous tears onto that piece of paper with the rough handwriting of my father, each single one hurting as if I was spilling a litre of blood from an open artery. I wanted to tell him he was wrong. I wanted to tell him he was a great father and tell him I was sorry I was always so upset with him and angry at him because I didn't hate him and of course he was not a disappointment and how could he dare say he was a coward when I was so proud of him and his hard work for me and I was just worried about him...!

...I just wanted to hug him and tell him I loved him a lot. I just wanted, one last time before going to die, to be cuddled by him and be told it was all going to be all right. I regretted not asking for that the day before, or any day of that week, or any of the months before that, just because it seemed too childish for a grown man, as I pretended to be, to ask for a simple hug.

/

"OPEN THE GODDAMN DOOR!" one of the soldiers outside shouted. After he had knocked enough on the entrance, he began to kick, and then to charge with his shoulder. The wooden door had endured so far, but chips of wood were beginning to break away and fly in every direction.

I swiftly took the bag and opened the door while I muffled and killed the thoughts about my dad.

I was greeted by the complete silence of two tall men glaring at me. They were around their forties, they had their standard green dappled uniforms, and they were armed with a pistol and a bunch of grenades coming out of their pockets, as well as an assault rifle peeking out of their bags. They didn't make much of a first impression on me _—_ everyone was used to dealing with military figures such as them on a daily basis. In a weird, twisted sense, I was almost disappointed by their dull appearance: I was expecting to see two of the legendary heroes I would so often read and be preached to about by the Federation; after all, these were _outsiders_ , soldiers who had traveled far and wide and knew everything about the wilderness!

As I looked more closely at them, it didn't take me long to find what I was craving for, but when I did, a chilling tremor climbed up my spine and killed whatever leftover, secretly-held enthusiasm I had left for the journey. What I saw were faces fractured by their wrinkles, so deep they seemed like mountains on a flat surface, and their shadows fissures caused by an earthquake. Even light, itself, was scared to look into their eyes.

 _Just what horrors did these soldiers face out there?_ I thought, terrified as I fantasized of the imaginary monsters that had left these hidden scars on them.

The soldier on the left grunted. Without a single word, they held me under my shoulders from behind with the whole length of their arms, and they began to walk. I was forced to follow their every step, because their hold was of iron and it was inescapable. My torso and my arms were caged and we were moving as if we were a single rigid body, like a geometrical shape translating undiminished.

We walked through the entire city, slowly. The soldiers did not utter a single word, they never changed their pace, they never made any sudden movement. The two soldiers were showing me to the citizens, much like a parade.

"Look! Look at this fool! Look at what happens when you are not loyal to the Federation!" I would hear them proclaim, but only in my head. Shame filled me when we met a group of children who pointed their tiny fingers and looked at me with curiosity, like I was a bizarre animal, and it was easy to figure out the admonishment that the adult next to them was giving, his index finger rotating in the air with plenty of verve. Likewise, it was unbearable to look at the disappointment pictured on my old teacher's face, or the distress of my father's friends as they came across us. The Poké Ball shone on my belt like a sin carved into my skin.

We took a long route so that we could sightsee all the main _attractions_ of the city. We walked past the brothel, meager consolation of many souls, which could be smelled from a distance by its intoxicating, cheap perfumes; near the library _—_ which I will have plenty of occasions to talk about later; thirdly, about an ominous gray building which towered over every other in the city, which had windows equally distant from one another and which looked the same every at angle you approached it from, home to secret meetings, secret discussions, secret decisions whose complex essence commoners could not grasp an understanding of, and whose typing of secret documents and mission letters behind the curtains of the building you could always hear, but never see: it was the Federation Offices.

It was a relief to finally reach the central square of the city, which, unlike what its function would suggest, was always deserted, since it was where executions took place. A heavy smell of blood permeated the square wholly, so much that you could say the air there was composed of iron as well as nitrogen and oxygen. The buildings which surrounded the square were abandoned a long time ago, because their owners would have rather lived on the streets than on the seats of that theater of death; their decaying state accentuated the sinister atmosphere of the square, while the fog and the heavy air of that day completed it.

It was also the last step of my parade through the city, which I was thankful for. A military jeep was waiting for us to jump on: for the first time in my whole life, I would have gone beyond the tall black walls which surrounded my home town _—_ their barbed iron, their machine guns and their spotlights _—_ into the open wilderness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Stadkerk, my hometown, seemed so small from the outside. It was standing, all alone, in the middle of a vast, flat plain of identical green, of which only the nearest areas were cultivated. A mountain range, beyond which were only lands of myths and legends, loomed over from all directions but east, where a thick pine forest closed the gap like cotton trapping the sounds of the city from ever reaching beyond. All the buildings I could see where on the outskirt of the city, which were all uninhabited in favor of the small houses of the center, since the population was far less than in previous times – this thought made the city look even tinier.

Three askew roads originated from Stadkerk, which looked like thin strings holding the city in place and whose function was akin to those plastic tubes used in hospitals to drip-feed patients. The first road went North, leading to several mines of salt and iron, and was engulfed by the mountains after a few kilometers. The second one ended near the mermaid river Maira – how peaceful and quiet the river looked on a sunny day of May, yet how dangerous it was to approach it to gather that precious water the city needed for its sustain! Piranhas, clamps, and legends of a deadly sea serpent which looked like an enchanting siren inhabited the river, and it was a meeting spot for many creatures from the plains which would often gather there in plentiful packs.

Finally, the third road reached for the woods east and continued beyond those: that was where me and the two soldiers were headed in the military jeep.

Up until that day I had always thought cars were as fast as three or four times a bicycle. Feel free to cackle at that childish idea, but in my defense I will say that I had never been on a car, I had never been explained how they worked, and I had only seen them running very slowly around the city, which suggested the idea. On top of my inexperience, the pilot's driving style was very aggressive: he rarely left the foot from the accelerator pedal, and I could swear he was hitting every bump he could find on purpose. Thus I admit that at first I did scream, terrified, when the jeep darted full speed through the dirt road.

Though, he was not doing it for show: monsters of all kinds lived in the plains, and the jeep's roaring engine and speed served to scare away most of them. A few still tried to chase us, namely electric dogs of a light green and wide jaws, whose barks would get confounded with the high-pitched electric cracks they spontaneously emit, and which would run so fast they would sometimes disappear in a spark and then reappear closer to us than before. Also, plenty of bulls, mindlessly charging in packs from any direction. The jeep would out-speed all these creatures, though in some cases not by much. A few rifle shots from the other soldier also helped deter some chasers.

One creature whose sight made my heart ache in fear was a human-sized, red mantis made out of shining steel, with claws twice the size of my head. One of its hit was sure to slice through the car – and my skeleton, for that matter – like butter. Thankfully, it was quite slow compared to the jeep, though it was still surprisingly quick for how heavy it must have been: a quick runner would have stood no chance against it. At another point we passed close by a big boulder which looked like any other, yet which must have been sentient, since it began to roll towards us and did so with more and more speed over time, taking advantage of the downward slope of the terrain there and following behind us. The jeep turned sharply to dodge it, but to my surprise the rock was still behind us, getting closer and closer, and its rumbling on the ground louder and louder. The driver fully accelerated so we could keep the pace, but what a careless move it was! The car was going too fast and its wheels began to lose grip, to slide, to fly on the ground without any control left on the steering while we were headed towards a group of trees. Luckily, the boulder hit those same trees and stopped the chase, a few instants after we had barely managed to avoid them.

At another point, and with no notice, a blast hit the left side of the jeep and lifted two of the wheels. Only thanks to the ability of the pilot the vehicle regained its balance: the back head of a two-headed giraffe had thrown us a psychic blast, while the other head was munching leaves and minding its own business.

Things were only going to get worse from there onward: our run did not slow down when we reached the forest, but the road became much more narrow, and it was surrounded by trees we could crash into. My breath choked at every corner, as they were all taken at a ridiculous speed and turned at the last possible moment.

"WOOHOO!" yelled the driver in a rush of adrenaline as the car crushed an unfortunate zig zag dog laying by the road, while the other soldier laughed and clapped his hands. It was the only animal we would see for a while: even the small insects had run away from us.

Deeper inside the forest the road became thinner, up until the lateral rear-view mirrors brazed the trees. At that point we could no longer see the dampened sun and the gray sky over our heads: darkness poured out of the thin spaces between foliage, a black gaseous mist slowly flooded our surroundings and us. It became necessary to turn on the headlights of the vehicle, and we _had_ to slow down. This happened so subtly that, when I realized, I shivered.

Albeit, far more alarming than the silence of the woods and the darkness was the now worried mumbling of the two soldiers – if even they were alarmed, I had every reason to be terrified! After all, I was nothing but beast-feeding meat for the Federation: what was to say they would not throw me out of the car into whatever thing was waiting there, if that could save their two lives?

A howl. Two, three, ten howls! In an instant, sounds of paws from every direction, as they ran through dirt, through bushes and leaves. They were getting closer to my left ear... but then my right ear would pick rustling... no, the steps would get softer, they were getting away... then really close behind us, all of a sudden!

How quick were they? How close? Where were they moving? I had no clue. My eyes, wide open, were darting left and right to the smallest sound. The soldiers, instead, had their rifle's cross-hairs follow precise movements, as if they could clearly see their target. For interminable moments, nothing else happened. Then, a gray wolf jumped on the jeep straight on, just as plenty smaller gray dogs attacked us from the sides. The former was shot immediately by both soldiers and, as soon as they did, the darkness vanished completely. The soldier on the driver seat did not waste any time accelerating, and the jeep was now running at full speed again. The smaller dogs were outran, or they eventually crashed into trees as they tried to hold with their sharp claws onto the jeep.

The two soldiers were holding a smile. An earnest one, not a grin or a smirk. The journey was finally over, when soon afterwards we met our first – and last – intersection, in the middle of the forest. We took the left path, and began to rise in altitude. The vegetation quickly thinned out and, ahead of us, about 300 meters higher, the soldiers pointed my eyes to a stone fortress, our destination. It took about fifteen minutes of slow ascent and plenty of hairpin turns to reach the place, but it was a much calmer travel than any moment before it. Even the car's engine seemed to relax its roar into a low humming.

I took advantage of that time to collect my thoughts about the monsters I had a glance at. To my own surprise, while they did scare me, I was not deeply disturbed and terrified by their sight. Sure, they were hostile and plenty powerful, but they were not the _pure incarnation of evil_ , like the Federation always hammered in.

" _...All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the monsters. They are the pure incarnation of evil, and shall only be purged",_ was written on a verse of the _Victorious Scriptures_. Closer to my perception was a paragraph from "the book" _,_ which also came to mind:

"… _There is no logical reason to believe this wild, stunning, beautiful variety of creatures and behaviors could be all classified as evil. Quite on the contrary, it is a fallacious argument at best: even if we concede a definition of the concept of 'evil', for which, instead, there is only the arbitrary distinction of a so-called "Heavenly Savior"between what is and what is not…"_

That _stunning variety_ was the best way to describe what I had witnessed, indeed. My thoughts would dance around a few childish yet fascinating ideas, encouraged by the refreshed reasoning. I wondered about how useful it would have been to befriend those electric dogs, since electricity was such a luxury, and about how easier it would have been to mine if only we could ask rocks to move by themselves. Some details about these creatures just seemed funny, like the weird, big afro some bulls were wearing, which seemed to be just a cosmetic, although it may have had something to do with the aforementioned electric monsters – maybe to charge their own electricity through static? Likewise, the presence of small wings on the back of that heavy mantis seemed more of a joke of nature than something it could use to fly. That, and they looked really cool.

"The book" truly had been an inspiration for me, a different point of view from the religious propaganda of the Federation. In two years I had only read so far as its introduction, but I read those five pages again and again and again, until I remembered the whole content by heart and had applied every one of its sentences, one way or another, to the world around me. Those sole handful of pages made me a different person, as they awoke me from the slumber of my similar: I could see the creatures of nature not as monsters but as living beings, just like humans, and reason with precise logic, rather than emotional beliefs. I could see the Federation for the tyrannical, unjust system that it actually was, I would marry better, greater ideals and I would even sacrifice my relationship with my father for them. Yet, at the same time, a superstitious fear deep inside me denied me to gaze upon the following pages, as they were, surely, too revolutionary: like a sacred temple, I felt allowed to climb the outside stairs, but not enter the palace.

At times, I regretted taking "the book". It had been put in the open section of the Stadkerk's library and not the restricted one for military and theologians, probably for an oversight – although, who could say it really was a mistake on their part, and not an inviting trap for some juvenile, curious mind like mine? It was a lone wolf among all the hundreds of copies of the " _Victorious Scriptures of Humanity and his Heavenly Savior"_ , of the " _Daily Life of Fellow Federation Humans, and their Ideal Behavior",_ the " _Practical and Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, the Technologies, (and Monsters)",_ the " _Theoretical, Rigorously Demonstrated Facts and Theorems about the Righteousness of the UFPHR"_ , the textbooks about military rules and regime, and the scarce number of different sappy light novels, all whose cover, size, content – smell, even! – I could recognize at a single glance of the unnecessarily voluminous shelves they were sitting on.

Among all those, the book stood out like a sore thumb. It had a different look and a different aura, and I immediately knew it was one of the many prohibited books I was not supposed to touch. I was scared to take it but curiosity got the best of me: I snatched it and put it inside my bag, where it would reside for years in its hidden pocket under the base. When I finally closed It was voluminous but not massive, elegant but not grandiose. It had a dark green cover and gold letters for its title, which read on its front: _Biology Studies_ , and at the bottom-right corner in a smaller size, as if shy of showing itself: _by Samuel Oak_.

It was by far the shortest and most humble title of a book I had ever seen with my eyes, and its content sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. I knew of the existence of other books that spoke different opinions than those of the Federation, sure; of how millions of books existed, written by many people over many ages and which tackled unimaginable subjects and ideas. Yet all of that was unbelievable: the confined reality in which my mind had always reasoned was the only one I could measure and reason around. That is why an innocent book about the studies of a professor over many topics caused such a disruptive earthquake inside me.

The summary of contents provided more than enough to suggest my imagination, even if I knew nothing about the contents themselves: _History and characteristics of the extinct animals, Hypothesis on the origin of psychic phenomena_ , _Studies on evolutionary links between animals and monsters_ , _Recorded data of voltages produced by different electric monsters, How topology may be affected by powerful monsters_ and so on. The title _Biology_ really was only one the diverse array of scientific fields covered, albeit the most prominent one.

As I always did whenever I would think of "the book", I nervously rummaged inside my bag until I could get my hands to the bottom and feel the sturdy, flat surface of the book. Then, and only then, I would resume whatever I was doing, which, in that instance, was getting ready to exit the jeep, since it was already traveling under the stone arch that constituted the entrance to the fortress.


	4. Chapter 4

_Credits to AngelTheSeventh for his work as beta-reader._

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

Up close, the fortress resembled a giant stone golem. The effect was the result of the very slight incline of the walls, which loomed over the viewer who approached the structure from the front. It stood, immobile, on top of a hillock as it waited for the assault of the forest which surrounded it. Its many holes, cracks, patches of moss between the gray stone blocks were battle scars, testimonies of the numerous assaults of both creatures and time. Its comrades, an array of machine guns and many good, old cannons sat on top of the walls, always ready to fight. The two enemies were separated by a couple of kilometers of landmine-filled terrain—it was easy to spot the marks on the ground of the many which had already detonated.

Our jeep zigzagged between the invisible bombs before crossing the drawbridge over the deep trench which surrounded the whole building. Past the thick walls, the entrance expanded into a wide empty square, sitting on sandy dirt and open to the sky. The square was decorated by porches on two sides, to my left and to my right, whose arches were held by square pillars of the same material of the walls, although some had been replaced by smooth white columns that seemed to belong to a different time period and which were thinner than the pillars, giving the impression that they could collapse under the weight at any moment. The bulk of the structure was still in front of me, where plenty of space was destined to the soldiers' bedrooms, training rooms, supply rooms. Finally, a bell-tower was peaking from the side of the fortress opposite to where I was standing.

"Get out!" was the order I received from the two soldiers as they slammed the car doors and left the vehicle parked there. Their voices lacked the prior hurry, but still showed no real interest.

I was left there without any explanation about what I was supposed to do or why I was left there, and I was not going to get one anytime soon. For a moment I even thought I had been sent to the wrong place, then I took notice of the several people with Poké Balls and without a military uniform who were standing in the middle of the cloister; I suspected they were in my same situation, since many of them looked lost or terrified. None of the soldiers who, once in a while, would come by one of the many wooden doors and go through another would take their time to answer the anxious, stammered questions pleaded time and time again by some of these people, and Commander Clutcher was nowhere to be seen—most likely, he was still in Stadkerk, minding his own business. The only certainty was that access was prohibited to some areas of the fortress, including the entrance, as whenever someone tried to reach for it, they were met with threats and rifles pointed at their heads.

I was disarmed. Even a prison cell would have made me less vulnerable: it would have been a tiny, closed space that I could use as my own. I could have hid in the shadows of a cell without lights, become invisible to everyone, disappear even to my conscious self, at least for the time being. Instead I was forced to face the sight of the many men and women of all ages and sizes crying, curling up as they sat on sterile dirt, bobbing their heads back and forth to lull themselves. They forced me to think that, regardless of my opinions about monsters, whether I found them amazing creatures or not, whether I wanted to fight them or not, whether I believed I could understand them and make them understand me, I was about to die at the hands of one. Besides, I did not even know if the monster we had to capture could understand human speech or thought processes.

Nonetheless, I took a deep breath and imposed myself to stay positive. I could see that some individuals were still talking with each other, and a couple of them even seemed to be in high spirits; others had not arrived yet or were probably in other areas of the fortress, since I could only count about thirty people in total. Thus, I set out to explore the fortress to the extent it was allowed, and talk with as many as I could.

I first closed in on an unsettling group of a dozen who were compacted in a corner of the left porch near the door that led to the headquarters. They were isolated from everyone else, and looked like thugs: they all wore the same black sweaters, they all had their hands in their pockets and had the same short haircut. They were keen on listening to one of their fellows.

"...guns... from the soldiers... night... create an outpost of rebels...," I heard him say as he gestured plenty with his hands, before he coughed loudly and gazed at me as if I was an enemy spy.

The man was robust, around his forties, and he stood out thanks to his stature—the average height would reach about his chest—though his back was arched, his hands weaved together and kept close to his chest as if he was trying to be as small as possible, which was a lost cause. This, along with untidy dark hair that reached his ankles and hid his face when looked from the side, conflicted with an otherwise handsome look: he had a prominent chin, piercing blue eyes and a sculpted nose. His character seemed to match the latter description, as well: the tone of his voice was confident, and it appeared he was acting as a sort of leader, since the others were often nodding in agreement and not replying much. Plus, he must have been sharp and aware, since he had noticed my presence before anyone else.

I quickly retraced my steps before stirring any commotion. I wanted nothing to do with a rebellion against the soldiers, especially not with people that sent shivers down my spine. They just seemed too dangerous to mess around with.

 _Besides, they must be crazy._ I thought to myself. _What kind of weapon would they have that could beat trained soldiers armed to their teeth? Knives? Punches and kicks? Words? At least we have a Poké Ball to deal with the monsters: the odds of completing the mission are higher than those of succeeding in whatever rebellion they are talking about._

"I agree with you; those men look scary!"

The childish voice had come from behind me; I turned around and I saw three boys who were smiling at me. It was the oldest who spoke up, and from his smooth chin and round cheeks I deduced that he was not older than eleven, maybe twelve years.

 _Surely, they must be some soldier's children..._ I thought, waiting for their father to pick them up. _Soon, a soldier will stop by, I am certain of it. There is no way they would let their children near criminals like us._

Yet, none of the passing soldiers seemed to recognize them, or even glance at them.

 _They are some soldier's children, right? They must be!_ I thought, but I began to fear the other possibility. With a node in my throat, I examined them for Poké Balls. Indeed, all three of them were carrying one.

My stomach contracted, I wanted to puke. _How despicable of the Federation, those bastards! Even children are sent to their deaths without a second thought? What could they have done to deserve it? They are just children! Children!_ I screamed inside my head, for my moral conscience only to hear.

The boy squealed with renewed excitement. "So, so? What did those thugs say?"

The three of them were now looking up at me with impatient, adoring eyes.

"Huh... Som- something about rebelling against the soldiers, conquering the fortress and making it their own base for a rebel group," I said. His acute voice had took me by surprise once again, and its cheeriness made the situation even more horrifying. Did they not realize that they were on a death sentence?

"Wow!" they cried in unison, their mouths open. "They don't look like real rebels, though..."

The boy had quickly changed his mind, and was now in somewhat low spirits.

"Why not?" I replied, mechanically, as my mind was still digesting their circumstance.

"Because Mom and Dad are real rebels, and back in Esklakota they told us that those are bad guys!" he explained with serious enthusiasm and, as he did, he carelessly pointed his tiny index finger at the thugs. Thankfully, none of them noticed or cared about the boy's gesture.

"The real rebels don't do shady stuff in the back alleys, and they don't kill people with guns! They are heroes! Also, rebels already have a city, and mom and dad are going there! They said that we need to capture our own monster to become rebels, so then we can all go there!"

A city of rebels. I had heard rumors of it, but I had never believed in its existence. It just didn't make sense, that a group of people could gather together and live without the Federation. Even if some could manage to gather supplies in a self-sufficient way and fend off all monsters, the Federation would wipe them from existence with their powerful army as soon as they heard of them. Most likely, their parents were deemed as rebels by the Federation and sent to another Capture Mission. They must have lied to their kids that they were going to this phantom rebel city, and that they would have, surely, met there.

So that was it. There were no more doubts about the sad fate of these kids. I took a deep breath, and made an effort to play along.

"Aren't the monsters scary, though?" I asked.

"I'm not scared of them!" he proudly exclaimed, in an upward motion that was almost a jump. "I have a dog at home, his name is Leo, and all he does is eat and make funny grumpy faces!"

He mimicked the dog's expression, curving his brows and his mouth in a grotesque frown. The other two giggled at their brother.

"He is not scary: he doesn't bark ever ever, not even to strangers, and he has never hurt anyone! I've even trained him to shake hands—err, paws!" he chuckled.

 _A normal type,_ I thought.

The image of the hierarchical pyramid of types came to mind. Types were defined in the _Theoretical_ , as a mean to classify monsters on the larger scale. The pyramid was divided through horizontal lines, and each bar was of a different color and type. In the following pages of the book, a few lines described each type.

Normal types, in particular, were at the bottom tier, colored gray. _At their peak levels_ , the book stated, _Normal-types are tougher versions of the old animals, and comparable to them otherwise. They are not considered a dangerous threat, although deaths from them are high in numbers because they are a common sight, even for citizens. They are most docile when young, and some species are even friendly towards humans, which makes taming them possible, a characteristic unlike any other type._

"I wish I could have him here, but the soldiers took him away..."

"I'm sure that he is fine and that you'll see him soon," I told him.

I held a smile for the rest of the conversation and soon waved the trio goodbye. The short exchange had drained my energies very quickly, so I walked away and tucked myself under one of the arches of the left porch.

About ten meters in front of me, a couple of soldiers were guarding the door leading to the food and weapons' magazine. Of course, they began eyeing me as soon as I stopped there, and readied their carbines for good measure. A third soldier then approached from the door on the other end of the porch—the one leading to the church—and came towards me. He was the tallest of the three and his ample breast muscles, arms and legs were stretching his uniform; his steps resonated through the porch's stone pavement with the clear, solid clack-tap of his black boots.

He halted when he was almost on top of me. Towering over my body, he was so close that I could see his nostrils dilate and shrink from his heavy breathing.

"You didn't tell them, did you?" he gently asked in a soft, bass voice which contrasted with his intimidating appearance.

"Wh- what-?" I stuttered. I was gasping for breath.

He took a quick glance to his side to make sure nobody else was listening. Then, he explained. "The kids. You didn't tell them about the perils of this mission, did you?"

 _Oh_ _. So that's his concern._ Though it was unexpected, the soldier's worry for the kids seemed genuine. I felt relieved, and managed to breathe.

"No, I didn't," was my reply.

He sighed. "Good, Thank you. At least they can play and have fun for now."

He began to walk along the porch, in the direction opposite to where he had come from, and gestured me to follow.

"I know what you are thinking," he said after a brief silence. "Why am I worrying about them, right? I am not part of the mission, in a couple of days I won't see them anymore."

The soldier's wrinkles showed, tick and plentiful. "I just don't think it's fair for kids to pay their parents' misbehavior."

I let him continue his monologue, since I was still unsure of what to reply, or to which degree I could have trusted him.

"I am the one who drove them here, you know? They think this is all a game. They are so cheerful and naive, they are the most joyful things I've seen in my life."

His eyes were staring off in the distance, and his hands were moving from his pockets to his shirt, to each other and then back again, as if he did not recognize or feel the shapes of his own body. They were telling guilt, and they were telling that within his big muscular body, which he wore with pride, they could not find anything to protect these young people.

"They even gave me a nickname: I'm Big B," he said with great conviction while he patted his chest, as if the nickname was a military alias he had been given in acknowledgment of his extraordinary accomplishments.

"They all have nicknames as well. The one who talks the most is Roar, Lody is the girl, and Cheese is the younger one," he said while he counted one, two, three.

"I really don't understand why I'm getting so emotional, lately. I'm a veteran, I've sent people to their deaths dozens of times already without blinking an eye-"

"Ah, sorry," he interrupted himself. "You must be terrified yourself. I don't have the right to complain, when you are the one—"

I cut him off to reassure him that it was okay.

He still begged me to let him explain. "I wanted to talk to you just because I thought that you were a nice guy. Someone who is understanding. Most of the members of this platoon are shady to say the least."

I nodded.

"The rest are crying themselves," he continued. "But you—"

He patted lightly the back of my shoulders. "You are courageous," he affirmed with, again, a firm conviction. "It takes willpower and a strong resolution to keep it cool in the situation you are in."

His words were surprisingly comforting. To be honest, I did not know how I was holding up to a better degree than the days before the departure. It may have been that I had finally resigned to my fate, or it may have been a rush of optimism caused by the freshness of the sight of monsters, places and people I had never seen before. No matter what, though, I did not feel it was a genuine confidence, like others showed in the platoon.

He winced. "To me, it looks like you are a bit too smart for the Fed's liking. Maybe that's why they want you out!"

In some odd way, he had meant the phrase both as a compliment and a joke; on my part there was slight embarrassment. I was not used to such flattery, especially since I did not think I was deserving of it.

The soldier had stopped shy of the corner of the porch. A door was on the right, leading to a building which extended around the corner itself.

He indicated the door. "If anything, maybe prayers will help you. The church is right here, you can enter it if you wish."

So I did, after he bid me farewell and good luck.

/

The church was a small, humble chamber made of a single nave without intersection, whose walls were a collage of those from the different buildings it faced. The nave was supported by a series of subsequent stone arches which were built up from the floor. On entrance, the arches welcomed the viewer and guided his eyes towards an ample oval window, framed on the wall behind the altar and as tall as the low ceiling allowed. It was the main light source of the room, and it was trying to reach every spot of the church, like an always expanding atmosphere, but the low arches kept secret corners everywhere. The wooden altar was modest and decorated with a plain cloth; its only luxury was a small, faithful replica of the statue of the _Glory of the Heavenly Savior—_ the original work was inside the Cathedral of the Capital City—put on the altar itself.

A contemplative silence permeated the church, which I found desirable, regardless of my dislike for religion as a concept. Among the dozen of smooth benches, a lone couple of elders was sitting quiet.

As the old man noticed my presence, he took his cane with his scraggy arms and, slowly, he began to raise his shaking legs until he was standing up. As he did, the only sound that could be heard was that of the cane as it vibrated through the man's unstable arm, and its echo. Then the man panted a couple of times, he coughed, he shook his head, he groaned some untranslatable gibberish and, finally, he wobbled to turn around and look at me. His abundant wrinkles and pimples and his short thin white hair gave no less the impression of a pleasant, sweetheart individual.

"Are you a monster fucker?" the old man cried, pointing his cane in my direction. He had posed a question which was, undoubtedly, refined and elegant; it echoed through the chamber like a harmonious song, and as if it wasn't enough he echoed it himself by repeating it a couple more times, each instance louder.

"Now, now," cooed the old lady next to him. She stood up like his husband did and taking no, less, amount, of time. Then she tasted here and there on his shoulders and his torso to get a feel for where he was. Finally, she concluded: "I don't see anyone here. Who are you talking to, darling?"

"What are you saying, Monica?" the old man groaned. "Of course you don't see him! You can't see anyone!"

"But, Mario, I can see you just fine!" she rebutted. "See? This is your hand!" she chimed as she grabbed his hat.

He yelled as he snatched back the hat from her. "No! That's not it!"

I tried to take advantage of the spontaneous quarreling of the two to back away unnoticed.

"Hey, you!" the old man screamed at the top of his feeble lungs. "Stop there, I see you are trying to get away!"

 _Tough luck for me,_ I thought. At that point I had enough of the loud speaking and I was worried someone else may have heard his words, so I decided to act instead. I first closed the distance between us.

Then I barked back, "I-am-not a monster fucker."

He smiled, he squeezed his vitreous eyes and stretched his neck towards me. "No, no. I see it in your eyes, youngster. You like them. You love them."

"What are you here for, boy?" he asked, all of a sudden. He had retracted his neck, opened his eyes, and spoken with no malice in his inflection, which made me think he had simply forgotten about his previous statements. The internal clock of his brain must have completed a full cycle, which in return had triggered a reset of his thought patterns.

 _Whatever_ , was my first reaction.

My second reaction was that the answer to his question was hard to come by. In truth, I had no idea why I was assigned a Capture Mission. I had stolen a book, sure, but that was almost a year before and, even if that was the case, it would not make sense for the Federation to allow me to keep the book in question—which I immediately made sure I still had in possession by tasting the bottom of my backpack with my hand.

It was not like I had not thought about that question before, either; at that point it had haunted me for an entire week. Regardless, the Federation was all but clear regarding the motives behind their decisions, and it may as well been that I had committed no crime but was regarded unhealthy or potentially treacherous; it was hard to say. In the end I did not deem the reason important: it was impossible to appeal anyway, since there were no charges to begin with, no jury against which I could defend myself.

I was spared the embarrassment of not knowing how to reply by a vibrant, mature voice, boosted up thanks to a speaker which came from outside the church.

"Attention! I need the entire platoon to gather at the cloister!"

"Please don't make me waste an hour just to come here," she added with an annoyed gruff.

I exited the church into the cloister, the two elders trailing behind me. Indeed, the platoon was gathering around a single woman, surrounding her yet keeping a distance of a couple of meters as if a force field was separating the two entities.

The woman seemed much better off than most of us: her red hair was long and tidy—she must have used a shampoo, a flat iron, maybe even some hair spray, which were luxuries that no girl I knew could afford; her face was clean and she had traces of eyeliner, lip gloss and eye shadow left from the last time she had applied them. While she did not wear a dress nor a skirt but a simpler sweater coupled with trousers, her clothes were colorful and well kept. I imagined that she did not stink like all of us and that, instead, she was wearing a soft perfume which emanated delicately from her body. Because of all these details, her figure seemed tall, much taller than all of us, even though she was shorter than the average.

Beyond all this, though, she had not one, not two, but three Poké Balls on her belt.

When I reached the group, the woman took a quick glance of at me, then payed me no further attention. She was darting her eyes left and right, impatient and at the same time condescending of our presence. It was hard to say whether she was counting people or sheep and whether she was annoyed at our chatter or our bleating.

After about ten minutes, most of the platoon had come; I could now count about fifty individuals, as it was expected. That's when the woman cleared her throat and began to speak up.

"All right, all right," she exclaimed. "I know you are all confused, just shut up and let me talk."

The crowd silenced.

"In a couple of days we will begin our hunt. You will be given food and a sleeping bag until then. I recommend you to follow my lead and my instructions, and if you will you will live. We'll divide the group in a front and a rear..."

All of a sudden, hushed, nasal words coming from the person next to me. "Heh, the bitch is gonna get one-shot with that attitude."

I turned to look at the speaker. He was a young man, likely to be my age or close to. He was a bit shorter than me, but just a tiny bit, to the point I was wondering if he was actually shorter, or if his shoddy amount of hair made him look that way. The light color of the hair did not help, either, while his beard was a thin veil which was easy to confound with his skin. He had his hands in his pockets, and he was looking at me with a confident smile.

"Nick. Pleasure to meet you," he said, but he did not offer a hand.

"The pleasure is mine," I replied, although with some hesitation. The young man felt out of place; he was acting too frankly for the situation we were in, as if he was listening to an entertainer on vacation, rather than to life-saving advice.

Maybe because she looked much stronger than me, or maybe because I wanted to believe her _and if you will you will live_ , I felt compelled to defend the woman's strength. "Still, she has monsters of her own, right? She has three Poké Balls. One should be empty, but the other two..."

He nodded. "Not bad, not bad; you've got a keen eye. You're right, she has monsters of her own. Still, an armadillo and a venomous insect are not much compared to _her_. She's going to defeat them without a sweat."

" _Her_? You mean the monster is female?"

"Oops, my bad. Shouldn't go around giving monsters a gender as if they were people," he parroted, and then reverted to a serious tone. "But, yeah, it is; looks like a slim, tall, beautiful woman in her prime years."

"Wait, how do you even know about th—" I began, but I froze the sentence mid-air. "Don't tell me... are you here by your own choice?"

"Yup."

I snapped. "Are you crazy?"

His reaction was absent, and he remained silent.

I inquired further. "Besides, if you really volunteered, wouldn't the Federation have given you proper equipment? Why not ask for some armor? Some firearms, anything at all?"

"Hello?" he chanted as he waved his right hand. "It's a psychic type. Haven't you read the Theoretical? They are way above the ten percent barrier. Psychics can jam any weapon before you can fire a single shot. Armor is useless if they can fry your brain. In conclusion, both are useless junk."

He was right. I remembered that the pyramid of types continued after Normal-types with Bug and Flying-types, who had similar rarity and strength of the former. The list went upwards with the secondary types Fight, Ground, Rock, Dark, Poison, but soon enough my reading fingers had reached the five elemental types, also known as the ten-percent barrier, which referred to that little percentile number on the side of every tile of the pyramid that indicated the overall chances of survival following an encounter with that type, – to be precise, the _Hartman's Composed Probability of Survival_. Beyond that, Ghost, Steel, Fairy, Dragons and, indeed, Psychic-types, just shy of Legendary monsters at the top. Their probability number had more digits than the previous ones, but only because it needed a few zeroes for decimal places, and a single one on its end.

The relative chapter dedicated to Psychic-Types gave reasons for the low number, such as _the ability of Psychic-type monsters to effectively control energy in most forms and, possibly, matter, time and space,_ and _the fact that they can effortlessly kill from a longer distance than most other monsters and with little to no counter-play, as they are able to fry a human's brain in the blink of an eye. Some_ , it concluded, _are even reported to be able to enslave minds to their will_.

As I reminded myself of the sheer power of the enemy I was going to face, I shivered. _To think I have complained time and time again for the lack of equipment..._

"Besides, my armor is right here," Nick explained as he opened his forearms towards the crowd in front of us. "It's made of human meat."

I must have been grossed out by his statement and made some disgusted expression, because he quickly pulled back. "Now, now, don't make that face. You know what? I kind of like you. If you stay a bit behind and let me catch the thing, I promise you won't die."

He waited for the slightest breach of my frown, the slightest twitch of hope of my face muscles.

When he got it, he smirked, and soon after continued to talk. "You see, I did ask the Federation to give me a few weapons, actually. They make the capture one-hundred percent sure!"

"Then... No one has to die?" I asked, with a dumb, radiant smile on my face.

He snickered. "Pff! As I already said, you people are my meat shield. I need time to put my plan into action, so you need to die in order to provide a distraction for me before she runs away."

I grabbed his shoulder and pleaded. "At least the kids?"

"Forget it," he said as he shook me off. "Kids make the best baits: she may hesitate an instant or two before killing them, it's a biological instinct."

 _Of course it is. It's just logic, isn't it?_ It was a thought, but I was sure he could read every one of these words written on the bulging nerves on my head.

He retorted against that hostility. "You should be grateful, instead. At least someone will survive this time around. It doesn't happen often, with psychic-types."

In reply, I shot questions at him as if they were bullets. "Why, though? Why risk your life against such a dangerous monster? Do you want to harness her power that badly?"

"I don't mind the power, but it's not my main reason."

"What is it, then?" I asked, exhausted by the conversation.

"I want to fuck her," he stated, bluntly, as he adjusted the gloves on his left hand and cleaned the mark of my hand off his shoulder. "I want to make her my slave and ram her holes whenever and however I please."

He said all that with a straight face.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** This chapter contains content which may not be suitable to everyone (somewhat detailed descriptions of violence). Reader discretion is advised.

 **Author's Comment:** To all my reviewers, thank you for the support. However, please note that if you write a review as a Guest I am unable to answer to any questions you may have (No, I will not reply to reviews at the beginning of new chapters, I wish to keep the chapters clean). I want to give an heartfelt "thank you" to every follower as well for the patience you have with my very slow updates.

 _Credits to AngelTheSeventh for his work as beta-reader._

* * *

 **Chapter 5**

We stayed two days inside the fortress, including the day of arrival. During this time we ate on a diet of bread and tepid soups and, since the bedrooms were already in use by the military, we had to sleep in the open cloister, regardless of the cold weather or the cue of snowing that began on the second night—only by lucky chance did that not develop into a storm. It goes without saying that we were not allowed to sleep inside the restrooms, but we could not even use the church or the storage closets for brooms, which were all locked up during the night. The exceptions to these rules were Nick and the woman with the three Poké balls for the obvious reason of being privileged members of the mission as well as, for a less obvious one, the two elders.

Many events took place during those couple of days and many decisions were made, some foolish, some heart-warming and some courageous, but I would remain unaware of them until much, much later. Nonetheless, I shall still recount each one of those and their protagonists exactly as I have been told from my trustworthy source. I will do so later but within this chapter, in memorial of their lives lost in the capture.

In the morning of the third day we were awoken by the sound of loud trumpets, played right before our ears, and told that the capture was about to begin. Among the commoners, tears that had been suspended halfway through now erupted again. The several plants of hope had been carefully grown over the previous days, postponing the zero moment of truth little by little—the first drops of rain from the sky were god-sent rain, for the mission was not likely in downpour; an eavesdrop of a couple of words from the soldiers reassured everyone that for the moment the mission was not ready yet; the fast-paced work in the cafeteria, which could be seen from the cloister windows, to prepare fifty more meals than usual suggested that we were not going anywhere up to the next meal—were cut from their roots in mere shattering moments.

No matter. We were briskly gathered in lines and counted; a small, puffy round bread was given to each of us; we were brought by foot a few miles from the fortress, in the middle of the forest and far away from the road, where one of the soldiers accompanying us explained that the monster was last seen four to six kilometers to the right of where we were standing—whatever cardinal direction that was; finally, and without ceremony, the soldiers and their rifles departed us, that time for good.

Meanwhile, in the thirteenth floor of our hometowns' Federation offices, a few officials were being informed that our capture mission had begun so that they could check one of their little boxes in their precious daily schedules. During the next hour, the same officials would have been busy archiving definitively the documents related to those of us that they predicted would not come back.

Within three hours from the moment we had first woken up that day, we had become renegades of the Federation and disappeared from the radars of society. We had become of no more concern than wild animals.

What, then? Were we to care about the mission and believe in its possible success, or give up? Were we to follow the woman's guidance, or try to survive in the wild?

The couple of elders, the hunchback bandit and his thugs, the kids, Nick, the woman with the two monsters, even the veteran soldier was there, stripped of his honor and his weapons and forced to join the capture mission— _how_ _did he end up there?_ I had thought to myself, incredulous—along with about thirty others.

The hostile landscape stared at us. The tall pines were a limitless labyrinth made of edges but without sides, apart from the occasional vines linking two or three trunks together. Fungi were in abundance, notably those red ones with white dots which grew plentiful on the bigger branches and which, on a couple of occasions in this place, I even saw on the back of small insects, similar to spiders in shape and of a vibrant orange. When the wind blew stronger a rain of thin needles would crash onto us; plenty were the pellets on the ground of this type of ammunition. The aftermath of those gusts would encourage us to move towards one direction, but beastly eyes would look at us from behind the stumps or the branches, and reveal themselves and scatter after an uncertain step or two. I suspected that the only reason that wildlife had not jumped on us already was our superiority in numbers and the danger our Poké balls represented for it.

It was a given, yet I was taken aback at the confusion among the platoon. While the elders were lamenting their pains—as they usually did all throughout their days—and while the woman and Nick were scouting the surroundings, most people were crying, swearing or praying; others were walking in circles, or staring for lengthy amount of times at the sky or the woods without any particular reason. The trio of kids had been scared since morning, and if their little chirps had been at first unsure of what was happening as the soldiers had brought them there, they were now terrified of the woods around them. Nevertheless, the veteran was doing his best to comfort them.

On the contrary, the thugs and their hunchback leader were clearly up to something. First they had gathered together a few feet away from the rest, then they closed in on and surrounded a group of a dozen commoners as well as the two elders. After enough flirting and deceitful flattery, they started to push these helpless around, imposing their physical strength and forcefully asking them to give up their Poké balls so that, as they themselves stated, they could compensate for the ones they had lost the day before—fact of which I was unaware, but which I correctly attributed to their failure at a rebellion against the soldier; to be fair, I had indeed heard the gang throw a fit and provoke the soldiers the preceding night resulting in quite a beating for all of them, and it did come to my mind that that show may have had something to do with their rebellious plans.

Mario, the old man, was more than willing to fight back, his bony arms fretting into fragile fists and his calves bobbing up and down. "You'll never get me, you crooks!"

A few thugs chortled. One of them, who was particularly heavy in weight, burst out laughing as he slammed his abundant belly with sonorous slaps of his hand. The thugs' tall leader towered over the elder: with a single hand on the old man's head he pushed and slowly bent back his spine, inch by inch, at which the elder groaned in excruciating pain from his weak physique.

At last, the woman intervened. To the surprise of everyone, she quickly drew two Poké balls from her belt and released her monsters. The first one was a sandy armadillo who reached up to the woman's abdomen and had huge claws, eyes with white irides inside black cavities and a back filled with hardened, pointy quills over-grown on top of other quills. It would look around, nervous, and frequently scratch the ground with his claws on a conditioned reflex, as if it needed to be buried under some dirt to feel comfortable. The other was a gigantic moth, just a bit shorter than me, violet in color and with a three-spiked crest, pearly eyes and a hairy abdomen; its wings smelled of a strong, sickening odor that clogged my throat and made several people cough or turn away from the monster.

The duo's sight was enough of a deterrent for the bandits, at the same time it caught the eye of everyone else and, to boot, the three kids were enthusiastic at their entrance, much to the surprise of the veteran who got quite alarmed when the trio ran towards the two monsters carefree. Roar took the hand of the armadillo which, in turn, lowered his body and relaxed, Cheese climbed on its back and sat between its quills, finally Lody bowed to the moth which widened its eyes, made a cheerful shriek and twirled on its axis. All under the amenable smile of the monsters' trainer.

It seemed as if the three kids had completely foregone their whereabouts and their worries. The scary eyes looking at them, both the droopy ones of people and the glares of the forest, had been replaced by the eyes of their animal friends. Afraid they were not of their poisonous barbs, their quills or their claws, for they were the same weapons with which their buddies would protect them, never hurt them.

It was certainly remarkable, the ability of those kids to cheer up with so little.

"All right. That's enough messing around, everybody," the woman shouted, loud enough for the whole platoon to hear and directed at everyone but the kids, while she signaled with her hands to flock around her.

"We'll now begin our hunt. Remember what I've told you two days ago about following either the rear or the front group, whichever you are supposed to stay with. Don't go around making unnecessary noise, don't act on your own and do tell me if you see something. Trust me, and you'll be fine."

The thugs and their leader grunted; everyone else nodded, and we set out as planned in the general direction that we had been given. I tagged behind the woman and her monsters, close to the veteran and the kids, whereas Nick was nowhere to be seen. No one else seemed to give a pass at the option of leaving the platoon and surviving by themselves in the wild.

/

The monster was upon us.

We could all see it, clearly.

A damsel, at first glance innocuous; a lonely girl lost in the thick woods surrounding it. Its gown snow white, long and floppy; a screen for most of its body, from which one could hardly see its bare feet. Jade, bobbed hair, matching in color with its long silk gloves. Thin, velvet lips, its mouth open just the right amount so that one could peek at its flawless teeth, but not see them wholly. On the side of its celestial nose, around its smooth cheek and a dash under its eyes, delicate shadows, painted by the lazy light that permeated the woods' membrane of foliage. Its skin fair and white—not pale, white, like that of geishas—beautiful women, those are, entertainers of only the noblest and richest parties of the Federation.

Yet the forest had retreated from the creature: the vines had slithered away to nearby trees, the branches had curved to allow it an easier passage, even the arrogant, upwards-pointing spikes of grass had bowed down to the humanoid girl as if they had acknowledged their queen's presence. A superior being, it was; it refused to touch the dirty ground, floating above it as it emanated a dim, reddish aura, flavored like a rose and dangerous all the same. And her eyes—oh, her eyes! They were pure, distilled gems of fire and apathy; they could bewitch anyone with just a glance then decide of their fate the instant later.

Breathless, I contemplated her beauty, her elegance, her posture; we all did, the bunch of insignificant lowlife that we were.

Yet, some chuckled. I could hear laughs and sighs of relief, of the foolish thugs who did not know what a psychic-type was and were relieved—or even excited—that the terrifying monster looked no more than a pretty girl. Still, their leader knew better, so did the woman and so did the veteran, whose fists were clenched more than ever before.

Thus began the capture mission.

First the monster looked at the armadillo and the venomous moth. With a swirl of its hands the armadillo was hurled towards a tree at an astonishing speed, making on impact a sonorous crack from the shattering of its bones and fangs, and it did not move again; the other was crumpled like a piece of paper and teared of its wings as the humanoid closed its hand in a similar fashion. It was left on the ground, lifeless.

Then the monster looked at the woman.

 _A leader, she was, who showed off as noble and superior, full of contempt yet just and, in the end, caring of its subordinates and understanding of her monsters, which she honored and loved. She could not help but feel sorry for the too young and the too old that had been sent to her mission, regardless of their much inferior social status. Back in the fortress she had tried to cheer up the kids by allowing them inside the small garden, a hidden corner behind the church where soldiers never came, a few meters squared of small bushes, grass, and a pile of sand she had brought just for her armadillo so that both her monsters could relax and play there. At first the kids were hesitant, of course, but after a gruff cry from the armadillo and a curious look from the moth—weren't they just like their dog Leo, all bark and no bite, after all?—it didn't take long for the trio to become great friends with the creatures. The woman did not want to admit it, but the playful scene that came right after did warm her heart a little bit. Besides, there was an undeniable childish charm in seeing her proud, strong armadillo, which she raised and trained hard, be stumped and defeated by a game of hide-and-seek because it would always leave an obvious patch of clashing dirt where it dug its hiding spot. As for the two elders, well, someone must have given them the canes to help them walk and a warm place inside the cafeteria to eat and sleep so that their pesky rheumatisms would not hurt as bad the next morning._

Before she could even shriek in horror for the death of her friends her head was already flying above the forest trees. The same would fall with a dull, faraway thud a good few seconds later. The woman had expected the psychic-type to be strong, she had trained her creatures specifically against the threat and she had truly believed in the capture mission, but the monster was on such a whole different level of power that there had been no match to begin with.

Soon thereafter someone was impaled on a tree. The monster dodged a dozen of Poké balls as she vanished from sight and, suddenly, reappeared somewhere else.

Then the monster looked at the hunchback leader. _Proud head of his criminal gang, he had almost achieved greatness. He truly had been at the top of the world, back when it seemed as if a single order of his could move the entire city of Esklakota and his name inject pure terror into every citizen;_ _h_ _e_ _was the_ _underground_ _king_ _of the city. Wealth and captured monsters came to him in bulks, of course, but those were not his primary goals, rather the means to achieve his dream: to make a rebellion, a great chaotic rebellion that would put whole the city in fire and flames, no matter the reason or the consequences—and to hell with the Federation!_

 _But something went wrong. His Feds connections inside the city must have sensed that he was going to turn against them._

" _If that is the case", they must have thought, "he is no longer useful to control the slums. Remove him, someone else can take his place."_

 _With a sign on the right paper, the turn of a knob and a couple of command lines on an old computer inside the Federation offices in the thirty-fourth floor, all the Poké balls of him and his crew were locked shut. It must have been a piece of cake for them to capture him and send him on a capture mission._

" _Oh, how could they dare!" he would rage, furious. After all his efforts to corrupt the right Feds and lick their damned boots all the time! But stripped of all its power and his cash and sent to a capture mission like any poor idiot, if he wanted a rebellion he would have still got a rebellion! They had made the mistake of escorting him to a fortress in the middle of nowhere with at most thirty soldiers; on top of it, they had left him together with a part of his gang. That was more than enough for him!_

 _The plan to overthrow the fortress was perfect, to his mind. He just had to capture that one soldier with the keys to the supply room, and it would have been done! Every one of his thugs was worth ten soldiers, if armed to their teeth!_

 _But that's where that goddamn soldier had to—he just had to!—ruin his plans, yet another Fed had to do that. Of course!_

 _That veteran, that old pedophile—it was obvious, from the way he looked at those kids—he was the one with the key. The second night one of the thugs was supposed to climb enough of the fortress wall from the inside so he could get on the roof of the church, which had a lower building; from there he could find the golden window in the dormitory, the one that lead to the room of the veteran. That guy could have done it, he was an amazing quick climber, and the leader and his gang were throwing a bit of a commotion in the meantime to distract the guards. You know, the virile military doesn't like to be called 'c— —ksucker' and the such._

 _Problem was, the veteran's room was empty! Then, a couple of hours later, the veteran told him and his gang to get moving inside the cafeteria, where a dozen soldiers punished them and took their Poké balls. Somehow, some-fucking-how, the veteran knew of the whole plan!_

" _Be thankful we won't kill you!" he said to them. Oh, the nerves! At the very least, his good thug did discover something interesting when he had glanced at the veteran's room, and by telling the other soldiers the gang got his sweet revenge._

The hunchback leader wiped his forehead with his hand. Although he had done no movement, he was sweating. He then noticed that his legs were stuck, like a thousand rocks were weighing down on him. At that moment, I caught a glimpse of terror in the clenching of his cheek muscles. Soon enough he was feeling so hot that he had to take off his jacket and his shirt, an odd sight given that the temperature must have been near ten degrees Celsius at best. He did obtain a single moment of relief from his gesture, but then the heat inside his body increased further. At first I thought he had a fever, but it became clear that the increase was too sudden to be the case: his skin was getting redder by the second. He began to touch his every muscle, more and more erratically, now clearly in pain. Eventually he started to scream and then to shriek as loud as his lungs could allow, as the water inside his body began to evaporate from the pores of his skin in a dense vapor cloud. Not even a minute later, his dehydrated body had become a skeleton of his former self while his skin hung down from it like a deflated balloon. The body then collapsed onto itself, the feet still rigorously attached to the ground.

The monster had ripped a dozen others of their body parts in the meantime, launching them at the wildest speeds with its unknown, invisible force. The angel of death then looked at the elders.

 _One would pity them, at a first glance;_ _t_ _hey were barely standing upright after the long walk in the woods._ _Yet the sweet, sightless old lady_ _had been a fervent believer of the Federation, and the man a zealot who had committed crimes against his own kind in its name. As maximum-rank civil officers working in the twenty-second floor of the Federation offices in_ _The Capital City first and later in Esklakota_ _, for many years they had in their hands the record book of life and death. They possessed the power of the Gods, granted from the Heavenly Savior himself only to those very few He was personally acquainted with and who He deemed more than worthy._ _T_ _he couple_ _was commendable indeed, since they_ _were_ _the sole writers_ _of the "_ _Daily Life of Fellow Federation Humans, and their Ideal Behavior", that is, the fourth holy book of the Federation. Who could judge any better than them who was an honorable, fellow, desirable human and who was just a despicable, sickening, corrupted monster fucker? Thus, their record book would contain the names of everyone_ _in_ _who was to be_ _forcefully_ _sent to a capture mission._ _If one's name was written there, no matter who he was—with the sole exception of the Heavenly Savior himself, for the obvious reason that He is all but a mere human—they would have gone to a capture of the highest level of difficulty, stripped of their gold and items of value and with their Poké balls locked, if they had any._ _The_ _couple_ _would receive daily updated information for each citizen, based on_ _the findings of soldiers, officers, audio and video monitoring; they would then make their judgment_ _through_ _their own analysis of the documents and the findings_ _._ _H_ _undreds, thousands of names had been written in that small book._ _Feds working in the offices called them Sir and Dame Judge, though those were not their real names, and even the most arrogant and powerful military officers knew better: they bowed at their passage._

 _Why, then,_ _all of a sudden_ _, did they_ _decide to write their own two names in the latest_ _record_ _? Was it_ _their_ _sense of guilt, maybe? The weight of their_ _decisions_ _too much for them to handle, a sacrifice necessary to_ _purify their souls?_ _The last time they had touched that book they had_ _also_ _written in it the names of the whole criminal gang of Esklakota,_ _after all, even if the Federation had allowed their activities_ _for its own convenience. Was it a redemption on their part, an attempt at proper and fair justice?_

 _No, it was not. Merely, the gang leader was being too rowdy, and needed to be replaced. As for the choice of condemning themselves, it was their religious devotion to the Federation to bring them to do so. They had themselves stated in Chapter I of the 'Daily and Behavior', and it was the central topic of discussion of Chapter XII of the same book, that "one must give his life to the Federation and his cause, and he must do so wholly with his mind, his heart and his soul. When one is of no more use to the Federation, one must volunteer for a suicidal mission in which they shall use their last strength for the glory and success of the Federation, e.g. a Capture Mission."_

"Light! I see the light of the Savior," exclaimed the old man, crooning a content 'ahh' of ecstasy as he bowed, not without strain, down to a blinding white light that was engulfing their whole bodies down from above.

"I see it too, darling! I see it too," she replied enthusiastic. Her mouth was wide open, in a facial expression akin to a monkey's.

After a brief pause, though, she seemed to change idea and cautiously dared to express worry. "Isn't it too bright, darling?"

The old woman tried to cover her eyes with her arms, without any improvements. The light was, indeed, becoming more violent by the moment and I could not look in their direction anymore.

"No, that's not it," the old man replied. "It's the light of the Savior! Look at it! Don't run away from it, you dum-"

The reply had turned into a scream of pain. Their screeches in unison lasted for a couple of seconds, then there was only the terrified cries of others.

When I peeked back in their direction, the light had disappeared, and so had their clothes and their skin, peeled by the light layer by layer to the point only their bones were left to earth.

It was still far from over. Most people were now trying to run away in panic or they were screaming as hard as they could, but their mouth would be shut with a suture and they would trip on an invisible obstacle and be dragged back through the grass, the bumps and the pointy rocks of the ground as if a lasso had caught one of their feet.

The killing monstrosity next looked at the veteran.

 _He was a loyal Federation soldier, a great father and an even better fighter, considering the limited capabilities of humans. He had fought monsters of all types and sizes and always came out victorious, though mostly had been in the lowed spectrum of toughness. Facing monsters had become an instinct for him, to the point he believed he could understand them wholly; that was why he was so certain that monsters were powerful but limited in their thoughts. Therefore, he believed that they could not communicate with humans unless nature had engineered them to do so to compensate their lack of power, as it was the case with normal types. More power would equal less elasticity of thought, that was his personal law of nature. He had served the Federation loyally his whole career and he had been an excellent soldier for the same reasons, because he had concluded that the Federation, a religious dictatorship that he could not reasonably agree with, was still the lesser evil._

 _He lacked the attitude and religious devotion needed to climb the ranks, be richer and have a better quality of life. Nonetheless, he was happy enough with the little he had: he had married a beautiful woman and had two children who were all waiting for him back at home in Esklakota, and he could not ask for more._

 _However, he was too kind, that was what ruined him. The idea that kids could be sent to a capture mission shocked him deeply and struck his chords; he could not believe the Federation would go that far. The first night that the platoon stayed in the fortress he did not sleep well, turning in his bed from his right side to his left and the opposite, as well as trying more ventured poses and, eventually, a few desperate warm-up exercises to induce drowsiness. The second day was enough to test his moral code and his principles, and after the umpteenth time he had seen the three kids' smiles he had enough of the situation and decided he had to do something._

 _In the afternoon he asked the kids to follow him. He brought them around for a tour of the fortress, that was the excuse, and soon after dinner he hid them in his own room and left them there with some food. To make them play along he invented the idea that all the soldiers in the fortress were partaking in a special game, one in which they were the protagonists! They had to hide from everyone and stay hidden until the game was over, and they would have won a special prize!_

 _It was at that point that he did realize how much he was risking and how little of a plan he had about what to do next. An incentive came from Cheese, who remembered that he had heard of a rebel plan from that nice young man and blurted the thought out to the veteran without concern._

 _As soon as the veteran heard that, he told the kids that Big B had to go and stop that. They needed to behave in the meantime, to which they replied with an enthusiastic military salute._

 _The veteran did stop the gang, but the open curtains of his windows revealed the presence of the kids to someone belonging to the bandit gang. Once informed of the events of the night, the general of the fortress deliberated to honor the veteran first, then to strip him of all his titles and send him to the capture mission like a lowly commoner._

The veteran did not suffer. His head was perforated by an unseen silent bullet, and his body fell to the ground.

Then, the monster looked at the three kids.

 _They were cheerful and naive kids, but it was astonishing, their inner strength. They did not cry when they were separated from their parents because they had been taught to be true way to be strong: to make new friends no matter where and to believe in themselves. In fact, the idea that the term 'capture mission' should evoke in someone's mind without any context was the closest to their wild imagination—in this sense, they were the best crusaders of the whole platoon—unfortunately it was also the furthest from reality. They thought their mission was to convince a monster to become their friend, and they truly believed in it because it was what their parents had told them. If that was the mission, they were confident of their chances at succeeding, they knew they were that good at it! With games, jokes and fun they would do it, just like with Leo, the armadillo and the moth!_

 _Whenever Lody was hesitant or sorrowful, Roar and Cheese would cheer her up. The only important thing was to believe, Roar would tell her. Even if the soldiers looked scary, the people were cold and the forest was dark. Besides, he would add, once past these hurdles the competition was easy in the platoon: everyone was so sad or angry, it was obvious the three of them would win!_

 _With those words and the incredibly funny faces Cheese could make, the deal would be sealed with ease and she would be convinced beyond doubt. After all, so long as the three of them were together, they would be happy!_

First came Cheese. With a single shot in his forehead, he stopped breathing.

 _Though they may have liked monsters, their opinion was bound to change. Kids become soldiers. Thus, no piety could have been given to them._

Then came Lody. Another shot was hit, empty as the silence that comes after the last song.

 _Cubs become lions. Snowflakes become avalanches. Thus, no piety._

Finally came Roar's turn; he _—_

All of a sudden, the crazed demon stopped its killing spree and lost its grace. Its aura disappeared and its eyes emptied of their inner fire, and as it dropped to the ground the grass welcomed its fall like spikes do at the anticipation of stabbing their victim. The monster gasped and wheezed, and it could not stand back up.

Sooner than anyone else could react, Nick dove from the trees above the monster and threw a Poké ball at it! The ball struck the defenseless monster, and opened with a powerful suction that swallowed it up whole. What's more, it was no common red Poké ball, but a purple one with a big, white letter 'M' on its front and two red ovals protruding like ears which shone as the ball tilted

left and right,

left and right,

left and right,

left and-

the Poké ball clicked once and stopped.

Thus ended the capture mission.

The entire massacre must have happened in no more than half a minute. Afterwards Nick must have spoken and the few remaining members of the platoon must have cheered and rejoiced but I was in a complete daze, unable to connect any two thoughts.

I do not remember with clarity and, while blurry images do emerge from my memory, I fear I may be distorting them far from truth, or imagining them altogether. What I do remember is what happened shortly after, when, among the soulless bitter cries of Roar, the stinking smell of the dead and their mutilated corpses, the remaining men of the platoon, Nick seating in first class, punched and kicked the enslaved psychic girl, all while they pleasured themselves with its orifices time and time again.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** I am deeply sorry about the delay on this chapter. Unfortunately, I had some troubling weeks lately. Rest assured that the story is ongoing, and I hope to become able to update more frequently. Thank you.

 **Author's Comment:** To all my reviewers, thank you for the support. However, please note that if you write a review as a Guest I am unable to answer to any questions you may have (No, I will not reply to reviews at the beginning of new chapters, I wish to keep the chapters clean). I want to give an heartfelt "thank you" to every follower as well for the patience you have with my very slow updates.

* * *

 **Chapter 6**

I could understand a pack of electric-charged dogs, a mantis fused with a metallic robot; a dragon, even.

What I had witnessed, though, had been too much. There was no way to process the killing spree that had happened before my eyes, lest call it a "natural reaction in self-defense" as Oak's book would advocate of monsters' attacks. No, only a demonic siren could have perpetrated it, an heartless ghost which had haunted the body of an innocent young woman and used it for its nefarious purposes. I would twist her objective beauty and see in her place a rotten version of herself, a pale, decaying puppet of a corpse under whose gown was the hideous monster, and whose true identity was revealed only through its blazing red eyes, portals which led the poor souls who stared at them into Hell itself.

It had all been too effortless. The monster did not spend a drop of sweat and did not make any facial expression during its murders, not the slightest one—rage, anger, the cruelty of a serial killer nor the animal wild fury which, although bestial, would have at least attested the presence of a soul inside that body. The demon had just kept the dull, impassive face of a statue the whole time.

It screamed, yes, when it was being abused; that much was true, and painful to remember. Nick's behavior had been indefensible, horrifying and impossible to condone. However, as much as I loathed to admit it, as much as it was a despicable, abject, wretched, sickening, vile evil crime and any other words and adjectives that do not come to my mind and which, even if they did, would not be enough, his act had been fueled by revenge, hatred and lust. Those feelings I could understand, at the very least, unlike those of the caught monster.

It would have not surprised me to hear that the screams of the demon during the abuse were but a trick to test our resolve against our human empathy, a way for it to regain the upper hand and free itself from the Poké ball. Whichever was the truth, I did not care; the capture mission, which I had miraculously survived, had been my wake-up call from my world of fantasies, the one in which monsters were cool pets to know and befriend. Be it that I had no plans for a future I did not expect to have or that the Federation had given me a second chance, in the helicopter that was carrying me and the other survivors to the Capital City I chose not to look back and to forego the possibility of cooperating with monsters altogether. I may have not agreed with the Federation dictatorship and way of handling people, but at the time it seemed, with clarity, that they were the lesser evil.

As for my book, I would have burned the damned thing as soon as I could do so without being seen.

/

The first time I have ever seen an helicopter had been when I was a small kid, back in Stadkerk; me and my mother were walking home after we had got the rations for the week. Being a naive kid, I was puzzled and afraid of that strange bird in the sky and its loud noise, a mixture between that of the cooling fans I had eyed in the Federation offices and a jeep engine.

I vividly remember that, at that moment, my mother lowered her tall, slender body to my level without any concern about the fact that we were in the middle of the road. Making sure to adjust her long dress, she closed the distance between us so her warm, caring smile and her gem eyes were all I could see; she then softly whispered that all was okay, and that there was no reason to worry.

Afterwards, she would teach me the name and the purpose of my unidentified flying object, to my incredulity and amazement at how a person, even without wings, could fly so fast and high.

I felt a similar sensation of wonder when I boarded an helicopter that day, for the first time ever.

Its sight, as it made its way in the skies towards us, suggested me a design inspired by some giant insect, one with a fat, elongated body, a big bee eye on its front and four tiny, almost invisible mammal paws hanging down; nature had to give the poor thing several wings on its top in order to slowly carry its weight around, flying in air like it was viscous honey.

However, the mechanical man-made rendition of the insect was agile and slick: it could hover, fly and turn with ease. In place of the inflated body was a shiny, sturdy shell, black in color and with red stripes on the poles that supported the blades, as well as a couple contouring the entire body.

The vehicle brushed the grass aside in a wide area with its powerful motors as it gracefully landed and powered off a few meters from our group—the leftovers of the capture platoon, which included me, Nick, Roar, and a couple of other men. As we got inside I discovered, to my surprise, that the inside was spacious and comfortable: leather seats, a wide view through the glass panels, even a small fridge on the back. Its total square footage surpassed that of my own bedroom, even if the room was not as tall.

As soon as we boarded, the FC-120 Dragonfly was ready to take off. The pilot started its roaring engines again: the helicopter's blades began to spin hundreds of times per second, then it began to lift. My heart jumped into an abyss when the vehicle bid its farewell to the ground, but the direction of falling was upside-down, as if the flow of time had been reversed. That feeling, coupled with the continuous turbulence due to the windy weather, caused a rough, disorientating journey for my frail senses. However, it was well worth it: in a single portrait, I could see the ample valleys to their full breadth, while the mountain range that hid my hometown saluted me from behind. The once harsh pines were now such tiny green dots, and the ruins of abandoned cities that we occasionally encountered were fascinating, as if I had just uncovered the history of an unknown civilization. We saw herds of tranquil sheep on the ground and we spectated the chase of a a pack of light brown wolves with bushy fur after a couple of striped ferrets. The polecats would run by skipping with a smile, as if they were mocking their enemies, though the fun ended in a gruesome dine quite fast—good, they deserved it.

At another point a flock of colorful swallow birds tried to fly alongside us; their leader, a proud bird with a puffed up chest, a crest of feathers on the back of its head and a tail that looked like two antennas—the television type—wanted to prove us its dominance of the skies, but was left to bite our dust in seconds, thanks to the sheer power of the helicopter and the ability of the pilot to maneuver collective, pedals and cyclic in a seamless flow of elegant, coordinated actions that would have not been out of place in a dancer.

That thought led me to a revelation.

I would argue that humans, in terms of physical fortitude and skills, were mediocre at best. However, I would add that, thanks to their creativity, they were able to build machines and discover technologies that allowed them to overcome their limitations. As such, even if some animals may have evolved wings, we were able to drive planes; if some creatures had chemical systems to spit fire from their mouths, we could fight back with flamethrowers.

"So what if that demon girl could use psychic powers?" I would think. "Nick has got special radio transistors from the military with which he can blast all frequencies of x-rays and other waves that can freeze her powers altogether!"

Monsters, on the other hand, completely lacked the ability to create. It all became so evident: since monsters were only capable of destructive actions, evil was inherent to their existence.

Convinced of my own argument, I set the case to rest and enjoyed our victory ride on the helicopter. After about an hour, the radiant Capital City finally came into view.

How could I have described the magnificence that was before my minuscule eyes, if not by the words of the Holy Book itself? At the time it seemed inconceivable, unthinkable to do otherwise and, in some ways, I still hold this belief true: the poetic wording that was used in that eleventh chapter still resounds within my imagination.

" _(1) The Immense, Infinite, Golden City eludes the horizon at the sight_ ", it began.

" _(4) Its foundation is a four-sided rectangle, for that is the number that belongs to the human race._ " The sentence used here is not just an analogy, because the City really was surrounded by four walls at right angles, with the opposite sides parallel to one another with a precision down to a couple of millimeters. The Federation was so keen on preserving that shape that any expansion or layout modification to the City was strictly prohibited. To support the increasing population, instead, several slave cities had been built around the Capital, each one much bigger in size than the Capital itself; these would provide resources, districts for poor residents, and a cushion against monster attacks. Esklakota was one of them and one of the most populous, hugging the western wall of the Capital and expanding far beyond it.

The borders of the City were " _(9) thick, unbreakable walls, competing in height and structural strength against the mountains of the Earth, and upon which even an attack of titans would be fruitless and doomed._ "

The City was furthermore divided into four sectors through highways median to the sides. Further roads unraveled from all four sectors, " _(15) at distances from one another which comply with the golden ratio._ " The two zones on the main diagonal of the rectangle " _(18) proudly shine from the light of the Sun, by virtue of the gold which covers every inch of its roofs and pavements. (19) Much like the sight of God's image can blind a mere mortal_ ", the shine was so bright that day that I could not look for more than a couple of seconds.

The other two areas had a metal coat applied to them, less reflective but smooth nonetheless. Smog came from most of its chimneys: while the two previously described areas were prestigious civil quarters, these were used respectively for the military and containment of monsters, and for science laboratories and highly specialized industrial production.

Finally, " _(34) Emerges the circular Cathedral in the center, a link from the earthly dirt to the divine skies._ " As if He himself " _(36) has sank his hand in the earth, gripped the Cathedral's pinnacles buried underneath, and elevated them_ " to heights unattainable by architects and physics laws alike. The result was a dizzying structure: a tower tall hundreds of meters from which, at any height and seemingly without any symmetry or proportion, child towers sprouted like branches; each of these was different in architecture, style and materials, and was reserved for a precise function.

For instance, a tower called the Legislature Hall looked like a giant marble pillar caved on the inside, with a geometrical motif on its capital; the lowest branch, the Common Tavern, was a rudimentary stone building with a spacious base, used as a waiting room for commoners' requests; a third one, the Stairway, spiraled along the central tower, like a snake around a trunk threatening to jump at any moment. Among these were also the Aerial Control Ring, a glass ring around the central tower, and the Health Center, which was just the administrative branch of the City's hospitals.

Many more towers were present, although their function was unknown to me; some were coated in precious minerals like gold or silver, or decorated with colorful gems, while others had a modern look thanks to the ample use of glass in place of walls and pavements.

Whatever their size or their height, these secondary towers would end below the central one, on top of which was a bright red pinnacle that, the Holy Book said, was entirely made of rubies.

It is no wonder that at the distance we were the Capital City resembled, on the whole, the holy flag of the Federation. The City was, de facto, the actualization of the Federation flag. Furthermore, since the flag is the embodiment of a state, so was the Capital City the embodiment of humanity itself. Take not my word for it, this was all written in the Theoretical.

While I was enjoying the view and speculating, our pilot was being instructed by an assistant at the Aerial Control Ring with precise, rigorous instructions about which roof he should have landed in and with which path he should have done so.

He also had to be in continuous communication with him, which must have been aggravating since the assistant in question did not seem to be doing a very good job, especially during the landing phase.

"Up! Up!" he would say, without giving any metrics. The pilot would then take a kind guess and increase the engine thrust to the main rotor.

"Speed up!" he would add shortly after, without telling a direction, at which the pilot would carefully leverage the collective to boost the vehicle.

After every other adjustment the pilot would try to make, the assistant would counter with another indication, often opposite to the previous instruction. "Left! Left! Down! Down! Speed up! Right! Right! Up! Up! Down! Speed down! Speed up!"

Not long after, the pilot decided to ignore the assistant altogether. He still managed a clean landing on the top of the designed hospital, right in the middle of the dark green circle with an "H" inside.

As we were landing, I could see before me tidy roads in freshly laid asphalt, large brick sidewalks in neat order, street lights every few meters, houses painted in various pasty blues, yellows and reds, as well as civil cars running everywhere and in such numbers that—I was amazed at the thought—there might have even been one for each citizen!

I could have observed that neat movement of vehicles for hours, but no sooner had we set our feet on the ground than a mixed group of soldiers and nurses urged us to follow them inside; I did not have much time to look around.

Inside the hospital I soon lost my bearings, having been brought here and there, going up and down the floors several times, following lines and arrows of different colors on the ground while doctors and nurses roamed busy and in a hurry, entering corridors with obscure names such as oncology, hematology, nephrology, which all looked the same.

Eventually, my confusing trip ended at a doctor's office, whose shiny plate on the doorstep recited

 _Dr. Sure Geon,_

 _General Practitioner & Skin Surgery_

The office itself was a small squared room with no windows and a blue diamond pattern on the floor, polished from the thorough work done with chemical cleaners. A bookshelf shoulder-to-shoulder with the wall was overburdened by health magazines and medical specialty books similar, in their no-frills appearance, to Oak's tome, but much different in content from their title alone. On the right side there was also a doctor's couch, alongside several gadgets such as catheters, a laryngoscope, phials and needles of all sizes and box-shaped machinery with valves and displays all around them.

Finally, there was the doctor himself, in a plain white coat, sitting at the end of a table that had the computer on its top face him, the same side that faced the bookshelf.

"Welcome," he exclaimed with open arms. His true age was hidden behind the white, perfect teeth he had, his good physique and his upbeat attitude, because I had attributed him about forty years when he was well past his fifties.

He then checked his computer screen with great focus, provoking the appearance of a smooth bump across his forehead, like the still image of a tsunami wave about to crash into the nearby brows-shores. After some typing his head wrinkle disappeared, reabsorbed by his relaxed expression.

"This is going to be a routine check, nothing more. I know that you want to leave, but you will have to be _patient_!"

The strange emphasis on the last word and the uncalled remark—I did not utter a single word of annoyance nor did I snort or cross my arms—aroused suspicion, which transformed into worry when the doctor began to laugh like a madman.

After some couple of seconds of self-enjoyment, the doctor noticed my poker-face, at which he braked his laughter like a car with hiccups and scratched the back of his head with his left hand.

"As in," he tried to explain in what had become an awkward situation, " you know... you have to wait, so you have to be _patient_ , but you are also in an hospital, so you are a _patient_."

I was so shocked at the sheer stupidity of the whole context that I could not help a chuckle.

"There you go," he said, satisfied. "See? Now you are feeling better! Everyone who comes here after a capture mission looks like a washed-out zombie. Now there is a bit of color on your cheeks. Right?"

He pointed at my cheeks, which I touched with my index. I agreed with him, convinced by his positive energy even if there was nothing in the room in which I could mirror my face.

The rest of the medical exam consisted of some basic breathing measurements, an ECG and a couple of tests on how good my eye vision was, all while the doctor sneaked in some amazing jokes such as:

"Oh, that's Dr. Rogers, the lenses guy. I hate him, he always makes a _spectacle_ of himself."

"Most patients who come here are mortally wounded, or their wounds are infected by nasty diseases. These latter, in particular, die _fester_ than anyone else."

"Since he had to move residence, he also had to do an _organ transplant_. I mean, he plays the piano."

I also had to fill in a questionnaire about my information—name, surname, home town, age, previous missions, Federation rank. I could have invented some of the data, in all honesty, since that document was the only official record of my existence—the original in Stadkerk had already been destroyed, in all likelihood—but I had no reason to do so, anyway.

I was conscious that what had been given to me was, for all intents, a second life, but to some small extent it still saddened me to let go of the idealistic beauty I could see in monsters, despite the fact that I could not believe in it anymore.

I suppose that the surgeon perceived my conflict, because "You are not still unsure about monsters, right?" he asked me out of the blue in a low, flat tone of voice and with a seriousness that frightened me. "You saw a psychic-type. You saw what they can do."

I did not reply, though my mouth was trying its hardest to come up with something to mutter.

"It's not wise. And don't think for a second that you are acting smarter than anyone else, or that you're special in any way."

"No, it's..."

"Where did you get these ideas from?" he continued in an onslaught of judgments and correct hunches. "What is it, the pamphlets of the resistance group? No, maybe not. _Biology_ by Oak, then? Is that the one?"

He hit bullseye. For some childish reason, I had thought so highly of the book and of the providence which had let that sole copy fall into my hands, as if Oak himself had undergone terrible perils and trials just to get his work to me, and me only. However, if it only took two guesses to strike the mark, I now had to admit that all of that must have been wrong. Absolutely wrong.

"I told you, you are not the first nor the last to get these weird ideas in mind."

The doctor then swung his chair 180 degrees and grabbed a tome from the bookshelf. He showed it to me, flaunting its age and its colorful cover which depicted a stoic man on a wooden ship sailing against the raging waves; the hero wore an armature whose patterns and colors I have never seen—were they made of bronze, maybe? The title of the book read

" _Odyssey"_

" _Glorious Odysseus,_ " the doctor began to recite as he stood up. " _I'd rather serve as another man's labourer, as a poor peasant without land, and be alive on Earth, than be lord of all the lifeless dead._ "

"It's from the Odyssey, eleventh book. Odysseus travels to the Underworld and makes a sacrifice to the souls of the dead in order to know his future fate. Among those shadows is Swift-footed Achilles, the Greek demigod who had irately fought in the war of Troy. He is the one who has spoken."

A pause, then he continued his explanation: "Achilles is a renowned hero of the ancient times. He is the protagonist of a whole poem, the Iliad, and he won the war of Troy single-handedly. Even he states that, looking back, he would have rather chosen to live a long, conformist life than the short, glorious one he had opted for."

The doctor's speech then turned into an outburst, his voice rising and a clear anger steaming from his gesturing and the pronounced forehead wrinkle. "And he is a demigod fighting humans! What is a puny, insignificant little kid like you going to do against the all-powerful killer beasts out there by yourself? You need the Federation! We all do!"

The surgeon got back into his seat, and for a couple of interminable seconds we both kept silent.

"Think about it," he concluded, cutting off any rebuttal I may have had in store for him.

With the sign of one last piece of paper he handed all the documentation to me, smiling as if that last part of the conversation had only happened in another space-time.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** As some of you may have read from the previous chapters, I have had some health issues lately, which is the reason for the enormous delays on these last few chapters. Fortunately, I am doing better now; while I will not be able to update once every two weeks as I had hoped when I began writing this story, I will make an effort to publish a chapter each month.

Thank You for your continued support.

* * *

 **Chapter 7**

The modest, well-lit apartment in avenue Fifth of the Capital City, which I was granted residence thanks to the great generosity of the Federation, resounded of nerve-jitterying squeaks. Though the patterned ceramic tiles of the floor were excellent at minimizing that satisfying "clap" my boots would make every time one of my feet landed—the scope of this latter action to further my back-and-forth motion along the length of the room—I would pursue sliding the heels as much as I could along the polished surface in order to produce that high-pitched, detestable sound.

Only a masochist would do so without a good reason; therefore that day I learned that, whenever I was agitated, it was the noise of my movements that distracted my brain from over-thinking. not the moving and stretching of my muscles which relaxed my nerves.

And nervous I was, without a doubt: I had received a letter from the Federation that day, the 9th of November 2109.

I was terrified to open it because—I am sure you do remember, my dear reader—any missive coming from the Bureaucratic Office had the potential to become an existential crisis.

Was another capture mission in the making? Were all those talks about a "second chance" a mere farce? How many times did I have to be sent away to the battlefield before They would be content?

Unsurprisingly, my brain was already set on the worst outcome.

Frustration—just when my life could have begun anew—delusion—it was too good to be true—self-pitying—I had given up on monsters, I could swear on it, they had to give me another chance, please—had once again got the best of me...

For a quarter of an hour.

Those thoughts did not linger for more than a quarter past the time the military officer had delivered me the letter. However unlike me, I had shut down my over-thinking in a timely manner.

"Roll back to square one," a voice told me; a voice which was foreign to me, yet clearly a citizen of my mind.

So I did. Without further hesitation, I snapped the red wax seal that kept the missive closed.

Back in Stadkerk I had always connected some grieving with that gesture. The drawing on the seal was a true work of art, and it stood out in the setting of a dull house like mine. It depicted the Savior himself, with a magnificent long robe that touched the ground; you could see all its plentiful folds in minute detail. He was holding a gun, from which a ray of light pierced the thunderous skies. A black evil dragon roared against that righteous power as its left wing was slashed by the soaring light. I say black because, even though the wax was of a rich red, the figure of the dragon had been hollowed from the stamp so that, once the correct angle of illumination had been found, while the Savior reflected its radiant light the creature wholly embodied the shadows. It was such a small detail that I had always been all the more fascinated by it when I was a kid. Whenever my father was not home and a Federation letter came, I would spend hours carefully rotating the image and marveling at the way the shadows cast from the ceiling light would change direction and shape, like the sun does with trees and poles as the hours pass—the wax circle was just like a speck of Earth, in my imagination.

It was a shame I had become so terrified of letters.

I repressed my childish minutiae and set myself to read the contents of the letter. When I did, I sighed from relief.

 _The_ **U** _nited_ **F** _ederation of the_ **P** _ure_ **H** _uman_ **R** _ace salutes you, comrade!_

 _Rejoice, soldier! For the glory of your soul and the greater good, you are hereby assigned the following mission._

 _ **MISSION:**_ _Standby_

 _ **WHEN:**_ _Until next missive_

Et cetera, et cetera. A foot note was also present, which read the following:

 _ _We invite you to partake the funeral which will be held today at the Church of the Cathedral, to commemorate the death of your fellow soldiers and other brave souls who fought for our holy cause.__

In conclusion, I had been truly given a second chance. My unrest could finally acquiesce.

In its place lingered the nagging thought that, I could swear, it was the first time I had ever heard my voice being that pragmatic and, most importantly, confident. Even though it was now silent, that kind of reasoning was such a stranger to me that, I feared, it did not belong to my character.

In the end, I still walked out of my apartment in high spirits, directed towards the Cathedral as I bounced my legs like elastic springs. After all, I was going to live another day.

/

The Capital City was of a liveliness that I was not used to at first. Moving anywhere required vigil eyes, as bikes and cars alike dashed on the wide asphalted roads and I quickly learned that I was always supposed to stay on the sidewalk, unless transverse white strips signaled the presence of a crosswalk. If I did not follow these rules—and sometimes even when I did—cars would blow their loud, aggravating horn and I would receive heavy insults, on top of the scare that a massive vehicle rushing towards me could give.

The abundant signage, which consisted of triangles, circles, squares and rectangles, each with a background and a foreground color, sometimes even more, was also somewhat intimidating, given that I could barely understand half of it: back in my home town all the horizontal signs had been wiped away by the passage of time—as well as some help by the horrendous graffiti people drew everywhere—while the only signposts that had not been stolen and melted for iron were the ones showing the way to the Federation offices.

Nevertheless, I soon found myself enjoying those walks. Plenty was to be seen at every corner: the residences alone could capture my interest with their eye-catching designs and flawless facades, and the sole fact that none of the buildings were worn out to the point the frame steel underneath them would peak outside was a novelty. Furthermore, the breadth and richness of libraries, gyms, offices and pubs was superlative, and beyond what my wildest dreams could conceive.

I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that the City had gardens. Grass trimmed precisely to the millimeter, tall trees and wide open spaces; some of these parks even offered small ponds and brooks of water to the delight of its visitors.

The largest of these gardens was, without a doubt, the Circular Earth: a magnificent explosion of flora surrounding the Cathedral and spanning well over a kilometer in radius. It was, by all means, an open-air museum of the vegetable kingdom, with a stunning variety of samples neatly broken down between the various sectors according to the ecosystem they were native of. From well-known oaks, nettles and berry bushes, nevertheless of a stature, strength or health which I had never seen in nature, to plants of exotic shapes and colors like palms, trees with yellow elongated fruits—which, given their height, looked more like giant herbs—or certain compounds of straight leaves shooting in all directions in a chaos of abstract beauty.

And how could I ever forget to mention the gracious edelweiss? A flower with the stem of a ballerina's torso and petals like the folds of a white dress, yet forged and hardened in harsh mountainous terrain, at high altitudes where snow would usually be its night blanket.

They were apparently nowhere to be found in the High Mountain sector. Actually, one would have to deviate from the round tiled passageway into a narrow gravel road humbly hidden on the side—my curiosity had led me there one day, where most would have refused to travel just to avoid the dirt—and proceed inside a path immersed in lush pines. Towards the end of the trail the vegetation would thin out and, at the very top of the small rocky slope, only a patch of edelweiss remained, a well-deserved sight for the resourceful adventurer. The road itself rose no more than fifty meters total in height, but the scenography of a mountain path was still very convincing. Indeed, the tribute that the designer of the garden had reserved for these rare creatures was remarkable.

To conclude, I could have lost myself for days inside that miniature Earth and not become bored. Even if, and I could never help it, the imperceptible sensation that some little detail was off would never leave the back of my mind. Thinking back on it, I may have never heard the slightest sound of an insect buzz or a cheerful chirp during my whole stay there.

/

Although the Circular Earth was extensive and disorienting, a straightaway with multiple fast lanes cut it through its radius, allowing for fast traveling from and to the Cathedral. Hence, it was not long before the front door of the Holy building laid before my puny height.

I will not bore the reader with a drawn-out description of the enormous golden gate which separated the realm of the commoners from that of the Federation, with its engravings detailing all the passages of the Victorious Scriptures in superb images and ending with a representation of the order of the universe itself, the Church of the Federation right in its center. But oh, did it put my treasured red wax to shame!

I could but be intimidated by such a display; without a doubt, my actions were insignificant in comparison to those heroic gestures and the the universe itself.

Having my joyfulness cooled down, it was with a reverential devotion that I entered the holy edifice.

The ground floor consisted of a cylindrical room with a large base to height ratio. Practicality was the key to understand the architecture of the room: all round the lateral wall were elevators, each guarded by a reception, which allowed commoners to reach up to the ninetieth floor of the building.

The noise of mechanical ascent or descent was ever-present: long queues of people, coming not just from the Capital but also from its much more populous slave cities, were always waiting to present their requests with this or that office and be granted permission to use one of the lifts. However slow they may have been—it could take up to an hour to reach the higher floors—it was far preferable than to climb each step of the Serpent Stairway on the outside.

There were also a dozen other elevators in the middle of the building, positioned at the vertices of a regular dodecagon. Fast, silent, contained within a sleek glass tube and completed with comfortable divans to enjoy the ride, these elevators could be used only by the ten highest ranked officials and few others privileged, in order to reach the restricted top ten floors of which no information had ever been announced, disclosed, or even leaked out.

I was about to queue behind what appeared to be the shortest line of people, when a familiar voice called my name with enthusiasm.

It was none other than that show-off of Nick, naturally. He was boasting his purple Poké Ball, his prized capture, on the front pocket of a three-piece black suit which, for its elegance, must have costed more money than me, my father and his whole miners' crew had ever managed to amass together.

As if that would have not been enough to cause a surge of collective jealousy, he was accompanied by a gorgeous young girl.

Although petite, she had a style so snappy and biting she could kill with a single look. Her smooth hair was combed sideways to her right and colored with an intense candy red; on her long bangs, this color was mixed with sparse black spots which became more frequent downwards until, a few centimeters from the tip, the hair would be all black. Those bangs also guided the unsuspecting eyes towards her lush breast, on top of which they were resting idle and free; although, certainly, her revealing dark outfit also contributed to the suggestiveness. A warm white skin, glittering gray eyes, cheeks sinking below the bone into a pointed but smooth chin, a delicate nose, an high jaw, all these features enhanced her young femininity. On top of these, a couple of child-like details, a left-over from her just passed teenage years, perfected that body with an air of innocence that could tip over an already hard-kept restraint, and drive any man crazy.

At the very least, I could still console myself on the basis that the girl did not seem to dig Nick too much, and that his clothes were just a bit too tight on the waist—the bottom line being that money could not buy someone a good physique or love.

"You clumsy!"

As the two walked towards me, Nick bawled words to me from the other side of the building, uncaring of whether he was disturbing anyone by doing so. As per usual, he had established a tone of confidence that we did not have.

I waved back to him, but did not move nor talk back.

"That's not the right elevator, the one you are trying to get to," he explained as if it was such an obvious statement, like the addition of two and two.

When the couple finally stopped at a reasonable distance for a proper interpersonal exchange, Nick drew a golden card from his wallet with a big smirk on his face, and signaled towards the central elevators with his head.

"No waiting lines for my friends," he chanted with a proud smirk.

"If I said I was surprised because you have a golden card, I would be lying," I replied.

Nick yanked his torso, rotating it to his side as if hit by an invisible punch.

"Ouch! That hurts!" he exclaimed.

I was in a good enough mood, so I gave in to his playfulness and chuckled, even if I was hesitant to trust the person who had instigated and committed sexual aggression without a regret. I suppose that his cheeriness and confidence had beat my aloofness once again; I ended up resigning to follow behind their steps as we directed ourselves towards one of the central elevators.

After about a dozen steps, the girl finally spoke up for the first time, saving me from my soon-to-enact plans for an awkward presentation that were in my mind.

"Who is him?" she asked Nick, in reference to me.

Her voice was beautiful: fruity yet soft, with very slight cracks as if she had a mild sore throat. To simplify, I was already in love with her.

"It's a good buddy from my latest mission! We had fun with..."

"My pleasure," I quickly added while Nick continued to babble, and offered her my hand to shake.

However, my voice had sounded feeble and it had cracked on the first word.

 _What am I doing? Get it together!_ I urged myself.

Please, my dear reader, do forgive my inexperience with women at the time. I was panicking and, because her judgment seemed so terrifying, I was having difficulty even with basic social and communication skills.

Besides, it was undeniable that my lower-class status had set me in an unfavorable game from the get-go. I did not wear fancy clothes, my skin was rough and I had a bush on top of my head instead of hair.

Nonetheless, she still replied with an amiable smile and did shake my hand.

"Name's Chandra. Nice to meet you."

In the meantime Nick, who had been pen spinning with his golden card, entered a series of credentials and, finally, the card itself into a small computer by one of the glass elevator. Soon after, the glass door opened with a subtle _swiss_.

"Oh, by the way," Nick whispered, reaching so close to my ear while covering his mouth with his hand that it was impossible she could have not noticed the gesture, "she's all yours."

I was unsure whether he was genuinely unaware that his movements were exasperated to a comical degree, or if he was trying to make a joke by pretending to whisper.

Chandra did not reply back, but I did notice her stealing a glance at me.

With a playful wink, "I've already got my own girl, if you know what I mean," Nick concluded, pointing at the pocket of his suit.

As soon as the doors closed and the elevator began his rise, he dived one of the divans, stretching his body just to occupy as much space as he could.

As for me, I sat quiet in the side of the divan opposite to where Chandra was, unable to think of anything else but her.

This went on for a couple of minutes. Then, just as the elevator began to slow down, church bells rang; a mournful song was being played.

The elevator ended its course no more than a minute later. As it did, the entrance of the fiftieth floor opened, blinding my eyes from its holy light.


End file.
